


The Lady and the Knight

by dasyatidae



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Annie on my mind, Arnold Lobel, Blushing, Christmas, Coming Out, Coming home for the holidays, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Genderqueer Character, M/M, NYC, Robert tropes, Slow Burn, Some Angst with a Happy Ending, Some Fluff, The Cloisters, YA books and queer books, adult children of alcoholics, an excess of em-dashes, families, letter writing, mom issues, post-college life, queer YA books
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 06:08:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13001493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dasyatidae/pseuds/dasyatidae
Summary: In which Arthur and Eames are childhood frenemies who go to The Cloisters one Christmas and fall in love.





	The Lady and the Knight

**Author's Note:**

> Oh holy fuck, I'm finally posting this, after a year of writing and re-writing! Ahh! This fic would not have made its way out of my drafts without the cheerreading and beta help of entrecomillas and somedrunkpirate (sdp, this fic owes its life to you ♥︎!!). Many thanks as well to the inception slack and to my friends L, C, and dirigibleplumbing for their support.
> 
> There are two parts, but you can pretty much read this first one as a complete arc. Happy holidays!
> 
>  
> 
> _This story is for KC._

 

“What about that day you went to the Cloisters with Eames?”

“Oh. Yeah, we did go once.”

“You don’t remember.”

“No, I do. It’s exactly the kind of thing that a person _would_ remember—the kind of thing that makes a nice memory, once all the details fade away and get lost, and you just have these images that stick out. The images are good, really picturesque, you know?”

“Like what?”

“The long train ride all the way to Upper Manhattan, walking to the museum through this park of leafless trees alongside the river, walking through all the dark rooms. There are these sepulchral sculptures, like, knights at rest or something, their features worn away from years of people touching them. It’s an alright museum. I would have liked it more if I was into medieval art. But it’s the sort of thing that makes a nice memory, you know?”

“What about the unicorns? You have to have an image of the unicorns, Arthur.”

“Oh, yeah, the unicorns. I guess they’re pretty memorable too.”

 

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

 

Arthur loved flying. Not so much the mechanics; he wasn’t into aviation or planes, per se. Of course he opted for window seats when he could and enjoyed staring out at Olympus-like cloudscapes or the abstract painting patchwork of country below. But mostly he loved the _pause_ of flying, its liminal quality. Airports and flight decks were in-between spaces governed by different customs and social graces than the grounded world. On a flying day, Arthur could journey alone through terminals of perhaps three separate cities, essential life objects accounted for and packed neatly away in his backpack and his carry-on suitcase. With his headphones on, he was a bubble, an island, a world unto himself. He felt purposeful, full of agency and independence, not like some post-college kid being drawn back to his family to slink into the sulky, dependent ways of teenagerdom for the span of the holidays—or, on the other end, being flung back to this new, post-school limbo staggering under the weight of his parents’ expectations. While in transit, he might be going anywhere, for any reason. In the air, he felt as mysterious as Schrödinger's Cat, existing in myriad possibilities, out of sight and thus undefined.

Yes, on travel days, he felt he could truly shrug off the pressure that usually stiffened his shoulders. His body would gain a liquid, languid quality, his mind some quiet, and for seven or eight or ten hours, he could just _be._ He didn’t have to _do_ anything. Sure, he packed work with plans to lay into it diligently during the long hours. But once he got on his way, he let those plans dissipate with uncharacteristic sangfroid, let himself be swept up in reading paperbacks, journaling, or highlighting articles he’d stumbled across in the library databases and downloaded for fun, just because he found their subjects interesting. More than anything, he loved writing letters while flying. Arthur loved letters, even though in the last year he had somehow become the fucking worst at writing people back. Flying, he was held captive, and he could cover pages and pages in one go.

This flight, the second leg from Houston to LaGuardia, Arthur felt like writing. He flipped through the pages of his moleskin planner idly, looking for the page near the back where he had penciled in his Berkeley friends’ new addresses next to the familiar, unchanging addresses—three for Robert (mom’s house, dad’s apartment, school) and a couple for his favorite cousins. The planner was bulky, stuffed with papers, and the address page no longer lay flat. Another year nearly spent. Arthur pulled out the stack of lists and folded pages that were filling out the small black book and leafed through them, considering which would migrate to next year’s planner. Here were a couple letters from Robert that he hadn’t tucked away in the shoebox with the rest of his letters for some reason. And here, at the bottom of the pile, he found the postcards from Eames. He frowned, turning the odd-sized rectangles of heavy watercolor paper over in his hands; no wonder the book’s binding was bulging.

Eames was a family friend, the son of his mother’s best friend from Masters, so Arthur was forced to spend holidays with him as if they were cousins or something, even though they _weren’t_ and had nothing else in common either. Eames’s mother made him write letters and thank you notes to Arthur when they were little—just like Arthur’s mother had forced him to write to Eames—and for some reason Eames had never stopped writing.

Arthur had never liked Eames. His mother did not take this seriously at all. When she wasn’t chewing him out about it, she even made fun of him for holding the grudge, like it was a fancy, just a kid thing, their lack of simpatico. And she warned him that he would “regret it someday,” very serious business, if he didn’t appreciate Eames. She said it was all because Eames shoved him off a tricycle when they were tiny. Arthur didn’t remember this, but if it was true, it seemed like reasonable grounds for a grudge. Didn’t it say something about a person, deep down, that he couldn’t wait his turn for a fucking tricycle ride? And anyway, Arthur felt a kind of pleasure in taking a Willoughby-esque, recalcitrant disregard for the playmate long forced upon him. It didn’t _have_ to be logical. His whole life Eames had ‘threatened him with rain when he wanted it to be fine,’ and that was excuse enough for his dislike.

Some of Eames’s postcards were decorated with colored pencil drawings, mostly abstract patterns in blues or sepia tones that spilled over the image-side of the card and crowded Eames’s scraggly cursive on the other side, cramping the space where he printed Arthur’s address. Others looked like they had been cut out from pages of Eames’s sketchbook, and they had more doodles than text. Arthur hadn’t even read all of them. Mostly he skimmed them with irritation and jammed them in whatever book or bag he had on hand; how they’d managed to make their way here, to his planner, he wasn’t sure. He’d chalk it up to his reverence for snail mail, even from Eames. Arthur flipped through the postcards now, squinting at Eames’s notes about a long summer with his family in Connecticut. The latest was about his post-bac studio arts certificate program at NYU.

It was strange, writing letters. Kind of like writing in a journal and then tearing the pages out, sending them away where you could never look back on them to remember what you had been thinking and feeling. Solipsistic like a journal too. Arthur had this worry or nagging cynicism about letters—even when he threw himself into writing them so effusively—that over the years, writing different people, he was always really writing as if he were speaking to the same person. Evincing a lack of particularity. Like with love, how it wasn’t actually special or particular or _ultimate_ in any way: all the swooping, magical chemical shit that happened in your brain when you were gripped by a crush would happen again the next time and _every_ time you fell in love. And so Arthur distrusted the heady feeling of opening himself up to someone, making himself known—that feeling of getting into the beauty of things in imagined conversation that he felt when he was in the throes of writing a letter. Because it _wasn’t_ particular, even though he wished it was. He didn’t really want to be just going through a form, just writing _himself_ , always. Arthur didn’t want to live in an echo chamber. He wanted to be in real conversation with—with someone. This all wasn’t really the reason he’d become shit at writing people back this year, but it was a little, valid part of it, wasn’t it?

Robert’s letters to Arthur were very matter-of-fact. He often described his college and now grad program lectures and different assignments in detail. Arthur made himself read these letters carefully instead of skimming them. Arthur’s cousins liked to send him collages, stickers, and missives consisting of many day’s compiled notes, blue ink drifting into black drifting into bleeding sharpie and then orange glitter gel pen. Arthur tended to answer them in kind, to fold artifacts of his environment—a halved sand dollar, a photo-copied poem, or a flier for a Berkeley Rep play—in between sheets of observations and hellos.

Postcards were weird too, Arthur thought. Little haikus. He lifted one and tried to read Eames’s loopy scratch through a swipe of dark green watercolor. _—Got rid of my bed so I can stretch out on my floor and think—I still think better on the floor—and it’s the best place to listen to music, you know? I have this stack of pillows, blankets, and a folded up futon underneath a window that looks out on beech trees, on a tangle of electric wires that somehow seem invisible from the sidewalk. Sitting atop it all now, in a blanket cocoon, watching rain slam down. Does it rain in California anymore? From the news, you’d think it’s dry as a bone._ And here Eames had apparently run out of room to write anything more than a squished “-E.”

Arthur looked at the date; this one predated Eames’s NYU term. He must’ve been home with his parents and sisters in Connecticut. No wonder he had gone mad rearranging his room and chucked out his furniture. _Who writes about the weather?_ Arthur wondered. He pushed the Eames postcards to the corner of the tray table, slid his planner into the seat pocket, and—as if to spite himself—began to write about the sky, the weird cloud banks the plane was soaring through, and about how his roommate’s dog always peed inside when it rained, so he perversely disliked the rain nowadays, though California needed it, yes. What he might write if he were to write to Eames, if he were to answer Eames’s inanity with some of his own. Stupid stuff, really. Arthur hadn’t written Eames in…well, in a couple of years at least, since the middle of college. He’d just kept banking the incoming postcards, the sporadic but continual updates, with disbelief and then resignation, never giving anything back: the wall of silence he wasn’t allowed to put up against Eames when their families were together for the holidays. He wasn’t really going to write Eames now, though he might just play at it. It was just that he actually didn’t have anyone else to write—to _write_ -write, to fling his soul at—and Robert didn’t count. Arthur had emailed him just yesterday.  
  


It was Arthur’s first time flying into LaGuardia. His parents had moved to New York after he started at Berkeley, and the three or four times he’d been ‘home’ since, he’d flown into JFK. Over the phone, his mother had fussed at him that it was going to be stormy and cold. In fact, she seemed gripped with the fear that his flight might be canceled and had proceeded to nag him for days for daring to fly so close to Christmas, for not being free from work to fly home a week earlier, as if he had any control over that. Work vacation wasn’t like school vacation, he had reminded her again and again. The coffee shop was busy right before Christmas, with everyone out in the streets shopping. He was lucky he had gotten the time off at all.

The night was clear and crisp when he stepped outside, hunting for the taxi line. He felt sufficiently bundled in his wool peacoat and huge scarf to enjoy the cold. The taxis were hidden behind some maze-like twists and turns of construction debris, which made him smile. New York was more strange than familiar to him still, but he liked how dingy and lived-in it could be.

He called his mother from the cab.

“I’m on my way from the airport, alright?”

“Arthur!” She answered the phone already laughing, her voice singing out loudly over layered background sounds of merriment—the Kellys’ dog barking, multiple voices, the piano. “You’re almost home! Wonderful! How was your flight?”

“It was good. Easy.”

“Well, you’ll have to tell us when you get here. I can barely hear you. Eames is at the piano,” she said with delight.

Arthur felt a flare of irritation and, maybe, disappointment. But there was no point in whining _I thought we’d get some time together where it was just us this trip. I thought we’d get one quiet evening together, at least._ If the Kellys were already there in Arthur’s home—no, Arthur’s parent’s home—it wouldn’t do any good. “It sounds like a party,” Arthur said instead.

“It is! It will be when you get here, sweetheart. Where are you?”

“Um—on a bridge. I forget which one.”

She laughed again. “Well, we’ll see you soon!”

“Yeah, soon.”

Arthur slipped his phone back into the pocket of his coat and stared out at the brownstone-lined streets the car was now gliding through. Many of the windows were lit up, displaying Christmas trees. At a fair distance and speed, each tree looked impersonally similar. They were all swirled in lights and reflective globe-shaped baubles, the handmade ornaments and angels impossible to see. Arthur’s Christmas trees were sporadic, and he didn’t have many handmade ornaments from when he was a kid—well, maybe some of his salt dough snowmen and Mickey Mouse faces survived in a box somewhere at the Kelly home. His parents only did Christmas, a Christmas-Hannukah mash-up, when the Kellys spent the holiday with them. Other years, the huge fake tree stayed in its box in the attic. When Arthur was tiny, he was so excited by the elusive holiday that it gave a shine to the merriment of the full house and the Kellys’ company. As he got older, he felt like he was going through the motions of the Christmas pageantry, and the holiday never became his own.

Arthur pulled his phone back out and unlocked it, compulsively flicking between screens and apps for a moment before he decided what he was actually doing. He opened his messages and sent a text to Robert.

_Home tonight. What are you up to? You should come over later if you’re at your dad’s._

_Oh, cool,_ Robert texted back in a beat. _We’re playing dark souls 2 - I think we’re almost done with this boss. We’ve been playing for like seven hours. Erica is freaking out. I think I have to do this family dinner thing. I could come by in a couple hours though if that’s good? Or we could meet at 4 th Avenue Pub or something._

_Yeah, I think I have to be at the house since we “have company.”_

_Kellys?_

_Yeah._

_Word. Well I’ll hit you up after dinner._

_Okay_

When he looked up, the streets were familiar, and soon the cab pulled to the front of the brownstone where Arthur’s parents now lived. Just like all the other houses, Arthur’s—his parents’—had a stocky tree crowding its wide bay window. Arthur could hear music and voices drifting down from the brightly lit room, and when he looked up, there were splashes of blue, pink, and green, will-o-the-wisp streaks of light, dancing across the living room ceiling. After paying his fare, Arthur hesitated at the bottom of the front steps, his palm sweaty around the molded plastic of his suitcase grip. In a different season, he might post up on the steps for a spell, the length of a cigarette or two—though he didn’t smoke, generally, he was just deep enough in academia to measure thinking time by cigarette. He wanted to get his bearings and brace himself for the wave of joviality that would hit him as soon as he walked through the door.

It felt good to be outside; his ears tingled, but he felt fine. Still, sitting on the freezing steps was a dismal prospect. He settled for standing morosely, gazing up at the advent calendar window and around the quiet street. There was no snow, but a snow-like hush hugged the world beyond the confines of the party, unbroken for the moment by the scrapping or scrounging of the neighbor’s cats, by cars or passers-by. Perhaps it would snow tomorrow. Perhaps it would snow before the end of his break. It wasn’t fair, Arthur thought. It was his holiday, his vacation too, after all. He should be fussed over, cooked all his favorite things. Or if not that, he should be allowed to lounge around and read and be aimless and not get in anybody’s way—maybe sit at the counter in the kitchen reading while his mother listened to NPR and pestered him to help her cook. But he wouldn’t be a guest; it wouldn’t matter to his mother that he didn’t really live here, that he had never lived here in this tall, airy, fancy house. He’d be expected to be a host, to be present, smiling, and on hand the whole holiday, no matter how much his mom drank. There would be no respite, not unless his disappearances to the television room or the study were made explicitly in the company of Eames or the ducklings—the unfortunate name with which Eames’s little sisters got saddled as toddlers for following Eames around day and night. It just wasn’t fair. If there could be some middle ground, it’d be different. Arthur wasn’t anti-social, and he liked his Auntie and her husband Alan. He could appreciate the levity their beloved friends brought to his parents’ lives. It was all or nothing though. His mother’s sharp eye would be on him, and probably if he tried his damnedest, he’d still end up hearing it from her for being a sulk. He couldn’t win.

“You’ve got exactly one more minute,” he muttered to himself, shuffling his coat back from his wrist to squint at his watch. Because alright now, the cold was staring to numb out his ears and bite at his cuticles. And there was something pathetic about standing outside your own house scowling at the party inside like fucking Heathcliff or something—or Scrooge, yeah. Arthur looked around again to bid goodnight to the quiet, to the independence of his travel day. “Okay, now go,” he commanded. He heaved his bag up the steps and tried the door—locked. Feeling stupid, he knocked loudly, then rang the doorbell.

Scuffling, giggling, and then all three of the ducklings and another little blonde girl he didn’t recognize threw open the door and swarmed him, tugging on his arms, yelling _why aren’t you wearing mittens, Arthur!?_ , trying to help him pull his suitcase.

He managed to shrug out of his coat and give each of them a quick hug, making them squeal as he pressed his icicle ears to the sides of their faces, before his mother was there, arms wide, holding her wineglass aloft as she kissed both his cheeks. She was tearful with laughing, her dark hair caught up in a messy twist, and she looked thin and smart in a red cashmere tunic and tall suede boots.

“Arthur! Oh, sweetheart, it’s good to see you! Come in, come in. Now we’re all assembled! Kate and I were just talking about how good it is to have all our chickens in the house.”

Arthur was his mother’s only chicken. Well, Robert could be an honorary chicken, Arthur supposed.

He left his bags in the entry hall with some regret—wouldn’t it have been nice to sneak up the stairs with them and freshen up before hellos—and let her shepherd him into the living room, into the “assembly.” The ducklings had already run off, resuming some game of tag with mysterious rules. Arthur wondered if they still had the Nerf guns he had bought them last year, if they had brought them from Connecticut. That might be kind of fun.

The room was just as aglow and cheerful as it had appeared from outside. It seemed that the couch had been pushed off center to make room for his mom and Kate’s dancing, and there was a mighty cheese and cracker plate dominating the coffee table. He greeted his father, Kate, Alan, and three more of their friends (probably responsible for the extra duckling) in quick succession. They weren’t such a large party, after all. As always, he was impressed by how _loud_ they managed to be, the adults far moreso than the kids. His father didn’t even have his guitar out yet. Which was funny because, yes, there was Eames, still at the piano, as his mother had warned.

“Arthur,” his mother said, holding him at arm’s length to study his face, as if it might have changed in the seven months since his graduation. “Are we too ridiculous for you? It’s your fault if everyone’s a little drunk already, you know, because we had to hold back dinner for you.”

“We’re going to play Bite the Bag after dinner,” his Auntie said on his other side, her quick fingers rearranging his hair while his mother smoothed his collar. “I’m going to kick your mother’s butt this time.”

“Arthur,” his mother said. “Did you say hello to Eames?”

Eames was no longer playing, but one large hand still rested on the piano’s keys. He was half turned on the bench in their direction, his stubbly chin tucked against his shoulder, waiting. Arthur noticed that his suit jacket and jeans were neatly tailored, crisp and somber without a paint stain or loud pattern in sight, but his short brown hair was sticking up everywhere, making him look the same as always.

“Hey,” Arthur said, approaching him. “You don’t have to get up.”

But it was no good. Eames was already standing to clasp his hand and hug him awkwardly with the piano bench between them. “Arthur,” he said, smiling. Arthur felt bad suddenly that he had never written back even a single postcard. He probably should have managed one over the past year, maybe a birthday card. “I won’t get up if you’ll sit down and join me,” Eames said.

“I haven’t played in a long time.”

“It doesn’t matter,” his mother bustled from behind him. “You can still read music.”

“Play something together!” Kate insisted.

“Like what?” Arthur groused.

“A carol, of course. I’m sure we can find something. Vee?”

Vee was Kate's special name for his mother, Genevieve.

There was too much piano music to be kept in the piano bench, in the compartment there when you lifted up the top; the rest seemed to be living in the bookshelf half-smothered by the Christmas tree. A medley of adults and ducklings began getting their hands all over books, folders, and sheaves of paper. Eames was looking at Arthur, mouth quirked, eyes guarded.

“Sorry,” he said. “You probably want a moment after your flight and everything.”

“Well, yeah,” Arthur said, sounding probably even more annoyed than he felt. “But it’s not your fault, so…”

Eames raised his eyebrows but didn’t reply. Arthur rolled up his sleeves and slid onto the bench at Eames’s left. Music was thrust before them, and he and Eames leaned forward to squint at it, instantly synchronized, while the conversation roared around them unabated.

“I really haven’t read music in ages.”

“We did this last year,” Eames said.

“The year before last, surely.”

“Ah. You’re right. I’m thinking of that time during the summer before Binky’s camp, but we didn’t play that trip.” And then, “They’re not really _listening-_ listening.” As if Arthur were actually worried about playing well.

“It doesn’t matter. You ready?”

“Sure.” Eames counted breathily, and Arthur skated his fingers over the keys, adjusting his fingering. It was strange; he felt a sense of unreality, of depersonalization, all of the sudden, as if he were viewing himself critically from another person’s point of view. He felt this emptiness, like there was some other place he was supposed to be, something he was missing. No one had offered to pour him a glass of Prosecco after his long journey. That seemed significant. Eames had a tumbler of red wine sitting actually on top of the piano, for fuckssake. Well, on a coaster, but still.

Eames finished counting, and they began to play.

It was a simple arrangement, something several years below Arthur’s skill-level at the time when he had last played regularly. A carol, “Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel”—well, or “Greensleeves.” He preferred the latter.

Playing with Eames was—well, it was the same as always. Effortless. Eames was warm at his side, and Arthur thought their hands must look strange together to anyone watching—Arthur’s long, thin fingers, Eames’s large hands and knuckles scraped from stretching canvases. Playing with Eames was easy enough that Arthur’s mind was free to expend effort on other topics, on the ways it was the opposite of effortless for Arthur to interact with Eames and all of these people.

“That was pretty,” Eames said when they’d finished.

“We still play well together,” Arthur acknowledged.

“Can I play with you?” one of Eames’s sisters, Linds, asked. Arthur let the question be directed toward her brother and slid off the bench to pour himself a drink.

“Dinner is in ten minutes,” his mother protested, as he made moves in the direction of the hall and the stairs.

“Which is why I’m going upstairs to get dressed for it,” Arthur said. “Honestly, mom, I’m not _disappearing_.” Yet.

“No disappearing!” She shook her finger—and her wineglass—at him in mock sternness.

Arthur shouldered his backpack and dragged his suitcase up the stairs to the room that had been designated his. It was really a glorified guest room, twin beds and all. He was sharing the room with Eames, of course.Eames’s duffel was open on top of the extra bed, but it didn’t look like he’d disturbed anything in the room, which was spartan enough aside from a couple bookshelves of the books and knick-knacks Arthur hadn’t deemed essential for life in California. Arthur dropped his gear, drained his wineglass, and flopped down on the bed. It occurred to him to wonder if Eames had a NYU dorm room of some kind or perhaps a room in an apartment, some other space to be himself—hence the little overnight bag. It was only a lark for him, spending a few days with Arthur’s family. The idea made Arthur resent the two of them bunking together a little more. He swiped on his phone and texted Robert.

_How’s family time? I kind of hate the holidays._

Robert didn’t respond, so Arthur pried himself up off of the worn-soft comforter, quilted all over with blue elephants. He went into the adjoining bathroom and washed his face. Once he had spruced himself up tolerably well and shrugged on a blazer from his closet over a clean Oxford, Arthur crept back down the stairs.

One of the things he liked about this house was the circular stained glass window on the tiny landing where the staircase changed direction. It was too small and filled with layered blues to let in much light, but it was _queer_ in the outdated way they used the word in the Narnia books or in _The Secret Garden_ , in all those parts of the story where the little girl was left lonesome to explore the giant, neglected manor house—the parts where she found the cabinet of carved ivory elephants, the gloomy portraits, the dusty, velvet-cushioned chairs in long-forgotten drawing rooms. Queer as in strange, mysterious, quivering with not-yet-understood possibility, perhaps in touch with powerful forces from another age. The image in the window was of waves rising to meet a craggy ocean rock and a purple, twilit sky heavy with the full moon. The rock was both shaped and framed in such a way that one could imagine it the perch of some creature—a seal or a selkie girl, a mer-person or a gull—but there was no such figure to focus the image. If anything in the image could be personified, it might be the moon or the frothy waves. Arthur paused a long moment in front of it; if it were day, the right time of day, he might position himself so that he was standing in the middle of the blue light the window cast on the hardwood. Now, in darkness, he stood on his tip-toes to brush his fingertips over the glass for good luck.

The Brooklyn house had been modernized before it fell into his parents’ hands, renovated until it was all angles and crisp lines, scrubbed clean of its coziness. His mother had decorated it much like their house in Boston—minimalist, well-appointed, expensive. Arthur wished this little spot on the staircase provided more of an escape _,_ wished it was a reading nook where he could tuck himself away.

“Arthur!” Linds called and then bounded up the stairs, her little socked feet thudding pleasantly.

“Careful!” Arthur said as she plowed into him, and he swept her into another hug before turning her in front of him and pointing up at the window. “Do you know,” he said, “if we stand in exactly this spot tomorrow afternoon, we’ll be covered in a magical blue light?”

“When in the afternoon?” she demanded. “What will the magic do?”

“Well, I don’t know when, exactly, duck. And the magic…hmm. I bet if you stand in the center of it at just the right moment on—on, let’s say, Midwinter’s Day—and you wait and wish _very_ hard—I bet it takes you away to a different world, and you have lovely adventures there.”

“What kind of adventures?”

“I don’t know—that’s the thing. We don’t know anything about the other world until we go. We can only suppose what it might be like.”

“And how would you get back from it?”

“I don’t know that either. Maybe you don’t. Which is why I have never gone,” he told her.

“Because you’d miss us here.”

“Precisely.”

“Arthur,” Linds said, tilting her head back to look at him, eyebrows raised in an Eames expression, like he’d run the full-leash-length of her patience and she needed him to trot back now, thank you very much. “This house isn’t magic.”

Arthur sighed. “You’re probably right. Still, I hold out hope for this little corner.”

They went down to dinner and were the last ones to slip into their seats. Eames’s place was across from his in the middle of the table, smack in the center between the adults and the kids. He was leaning, arms crossed on the back of the chair, and he gave Arthur an inscrutable look. Once Linds took her seat, he and Arthur and the rest of the men sat down.

They didn’t have to say grace or anything, and no one appeared to be gathering themselves to make a toast, so Arthur tucked into his food—a part of being home he was unequivocally excited about. There usually wasn’t much occasion for him to talk when his mother was in high form like this, holding court with her friends. Occasionally a question would be batted his way, but there was never much space for him to step into once the _what’s-next-for-you-Arthur?_ and _what-are-you-planning-on-doing-with-your-life?_ inquisitions had run their course. His Uncle Alan, on his left, did try to talk to him about his grad school applications and was game to discuss the Lit classes he was auditing while they were on the subject.

“I took a Literature class this semester,” Eames said. There was a lull in Arthur and Alan’s conversation that Arthur was using to apply himself industriously to his steak. “Not part of my certificate program, but I weaseled my way in, said it was necessary for my project. It was a really small seminar, only about eight of us. The Development of Lesbian Literature in the 20th and 21st Centuries. It was really good.”

“That’s a strange class for you to take, out of everything,” his father said, smiling. “So specific. I seem to remember that when I was in school our classes had a broader focus. I took a class on contemporary literature and one on Italian literature, I think.”

“What books did you read?” Arthur asked Eames.

“Half the ones that are considered classic, I guess—Radcliffe Hall, _Orlando,_ _Rubyfruit Jungle_ , that kind of thing. And then we read a handful of newer books. Some of them were pretty good, some I think we read mostly because the professor knew the authors, but that was okay because they came to the class to speak with us. There was one I think you’d like—a retelling of _The Tempest_ , about a girl who moves to the city from an island in Maine.”

Arthur wondered what Eames was basing that prediction on. “Radcliffe Hall,” he said instead. “We used to joke about how depressing her titles are. _The Well of Loneliness.”_

 _“The Unlit Lamp,”_ Eames offered.

Arthur snorted. “Yes! The unlit lamp—like, what could be sadder?”

“An unfathomably deep hole in the ground filled not with water but with tears?”

Arthur laughed. “I don’t know. I think the lamp is worse, somehow. It’s less obvious, you know? Passed over, maybe forgotten, unable to fulfill its destiny as a lamp.”

“You mean at least the well gets to be a well.”

“Exactly. That’s a better fate, right?”

Alan shook his head and made a face at Katrina, the sister who was next up from Linds. “These boys. Can you understand them?”

“Nope,” Kat said. “They make no sense.”

Eames had his head tilted to the side, like he was still contemplating Arthur’s question.

“I know, it’s some existential shit,” Arthur said, stabbing a piece of broccoli with his fork.

“Language!” Arthur’s mother called from the head of the table, and the ducklings cackled at him.

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

“I understand. You’re talking about _Owl at Home_ ,” Linds said. “He thinks about the unlit lamp so he can cry enough tears to make his tea.”

Eames looked delighted. “I forgot all about that!”

“No you didn’t!” Kat gasped. “You read us that book last time you were home. Well, you read it to Linds. But I listened because I was in the room.”

“No, he read _Uncle Elephant,”_ Linds corrected. “It’s not the same. You’d like Uncle Elephant better than Owl, Arthur, because he’s an elephant.”

“And he wears a handsome waistcoat, just like you sometimes do,” the final duckling, Binky, weighed in from her end of the table, breaking from a tete-a-tete with the not-duckling girl.

Eames laughed while Arthur looked at them all, smiling but mystified. “Arnold Lobel’s children’s books,” he said. “You have to remember them.”

“Maybe…”

“Frog and Toad? You remember Frog and Toad at least.”

Arthur frowned. An illustrated image of dapper amphibians on a tandem bicycle did spring to mind. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Auntie,” Eames whirled to the loud end of the table. “Auntie! Do you still have Arthur’s books from when he was little?”

“What?”

Eames repeated the question carefully at greater volume until Arthur’s mom’s face lit up with comprehension, then regret. Arthur wondered how much she’d had to drink by this point, but what snatches of her conversation he hadn’t been able to tune out seemed coherent enough, or at least she sounded on level with Kate.

“We donated them when we moved,” she said. “I saved a few of the special ones, but—”

“Did you save any by Arnold Lobel?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m not sure we had any by him to begin with.”

“Oh well.” Eames turned back to Arthur.

“You can just show me on your phone,” Arthur said. “You know, some of the images.”

“But I wanted to show you _the book_ ,” Eames said, like it was obvious.

Arthur shrugged.

A few moments later, Eames said, “Okay, but do you know what my favorite book from my class was?”

Arthur looked at him, and Eames stared back, as if he hadn’t asked an essentially rhetorical question.

“No,” Arthur said finally, to move things along.

“It wasn’t _Owl at Home_?” Linds asked.

“No, duck, it was not. Although if _Owl at Home_ was very gay and had somehow been on the syllabus, I suppose it could have given my favorite a run for its money.”

“Was it _Orlando?”_ Arthur ventured, since it seemed like Eames still wanted him to guess.

“No, it’s _Annie on My Mind._ ”

“Haven’t heard of it.”

“It’s from the early eighties. It’s about these teenage girls in New York, actually, and they meet at the Cloisters museum when they’re both looking at the suits of armor, and they fall into play-acting that they’re dueling knights. And it kind of goes from there,” Eames said brightly. “Until they fall in love.”

“So it’s YA?” Arthur asked, surprised.

“Well, yeah.”

“What do you like about it?”

Eames exhaled loudly and spread his hands, gesturing something weighty and consuming that he couldn’t put into words. “Wait, let me just—” He darted up from his chair and out of the room toward the front stairs. Because it was Eames and not Arthur, Arthur’s mother didn’t even holler at him for leaving the table. Arthur shook his head.

“I’m going to steal his sweet potatoes,” Kat said.

“You better. I’ll help you. He deserves it,” Arthur replied, and he lifted up Eames’s plate and angled it so that Kat could scrape all the orange onto her own plate. He heard his mother amiably wondering to Kate where Eames had gone and felt a little bitter.

“He’s always jumping up in the middle of conversations to grab books,” Kat told Arthur.

“But why? He could just explain the book. It’s not like a person is going to take time in the middle of a dinner conversation to read a book, and it’s not like the book’s physical presence is going to communicate what it’s about like via osmosis or something.”

“He wants you to _see_ the book,” Kat explained. “To _hold_ the book.”

Linds nodded. “To _experience_ the book! Also, you could read it at the dinner table, if you wanted.”

“Not the whole thing!” Kat cut in. “You have to keep talking to us.”

“I think my mom would yell at me if I read at the table,” Arthur said, smiling. “Also, I’m a slow reader. I definitely couldn’t read the whole thing at once, Kat.”

There was a thundering from the stairs, and Kat began to shovel the sweet potatoes into her mouth.

Eames had apparently abandoned his shoes at some point, and he indulged himself by sliding back into the room. His mother squawked at him, while Arthur’s parents laughed.

“I couldn’t find it,” he said, dropping back into his seat. He looked rather glum. “I’m sorry. I thought for sure it was in my duffle bag. I really wanted to show you.” He snatched up his fork and poked at the remainder of his vegetables with a sigh. Arthur waited for him to notice his vanished potatoes.

“It’s alright,” he said. “I mean, I’m _terribly_ disappointed, but dinner isn’t totally ruined.”

“Well, anyway,” Eames continued. “Since I read it, I’ve really been wanting to go to the Cloisters like Annie and Liza.”

“You’ve been living in the city the whole semester, yeah?”

“I know. I meant to go, but…” Eames shook his head. “I got caught up in all the painting for my praxis project.”

“Mm.”

“Have you ever been?”

“No,” Arthur said, not meeting Eames’s eyes. He didn’t like where this was going. There was no way he was trekking across the city with Eames and probably an assortment of fussing adults and tween girls in tow. He frowned, mind racing ahead to how he might be able to prevent Eames from voicing the idea loud enough for his mother to hear. She’d certainly crush all his objections and force him to spend the day on an Eames-outing, being a good host, despite the fact that Eames very much lived here in NYC and did not need to be hosted, for fuckssake.

“We should go!” Eames said. “We should go tomorrow.”

Arthur shrugged. Ugh, it was happening. “Maybe,” he said, pitching his voice low so that it’d be drowned out by Alan’s. “I think I might have plans in Brooklyn already.”

“Doing what?”

“Uh…hanging out with Robert,” Arthur improvised. “He’s, um, playing Dark Souls Two.”

“Right.” Eames said flatly. “How _is_ Robert?”

“He’s good. Still at Columbia. He’ll probably come over later, so you can just ask him.”

“Cool,” Eames said, sounding like it was anything but. Whatever. Arthur wasn’t looking at him. Whatever trip Eames was on, being snippy because Arthur wouldn’t chaperone him to some museum out of a kid’s book, Arthur wasn’t having it, it wasn’t Arthur’s problem, and he wasn’t going to sit around letting Eames make hurt puppy dog eyes at him.

Still, the affront that Eames was radiating was just _not_ on. It made Arthur squirmy. “It _is_ cool,” Arthur snapped, like the words were being torn out of him, yanked out of the grasp of his better judgment. “It’s really _cool_ that I get to spend my holiday vacation choosing how to spend my own fucking time—and getting to visit my best friend, whom I never see.”

“Oh, so he’s your _best friend_ now.” Eames’s low voice dripped with sarcasm.

Arthur glared at Eames. Eames glared at Arthur.

Arthur realized he had a white-knuckle death-grip on his steak knife and his fork. Eames was clutching the edge of the table like he might go Hulk and flip it over, if it weren’t elegantly set for thirteen.

For a moment, all was right in the world.

The little girls were talking at them, but Arthur couldn’t hear. The blood was pounding in his ears. Eames’s forehead was creased in a frown, and his green-ish eyes had a glow about them. Arthur gritted his teeth. He fucking hated—okay, sorry, Mom—he fucking _did not like_ Eames very much at all, dammit.

“Boys,” Eames’s father said. “Boys.” As if they were ten. Alan put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, and Arthur snapped back to reality. They were in the middle of dinner. “Eames,” Alan said. “Let Arthur be. If he has plans, he has plans. I’m sure there’s someone else here who would be interested in going to the museum with you.”

“Yeah, sorry. Of course. Sorry, dad, Arthur.” Eames tried to grin, grabbed at his wine glass and took a long drink.

Arthur opened his mouth to—something. But it was too late.

“Arthur, what’s this?” His mother’s voice rang out.

Arthur grabbed his wine glass and drank deeply too.

His mother’s cheeks were pink, and her expression was warring between playful exasperation and a real frown. “Arthur!” she called.

“Darling,” Kate said to Eames. “Are you boys bickering? And here we let you sit at the grown ups table with us and the ducklings.”

“There’s only one table,” Eames said, turning his brightest smile on her and Arthur’s mother. The charm offensive. Well, Arthur was glad for it this time.

But Arthur’s mom wouldn’t let it go. “What’s gotten you all hot and bothered? Kate, look at Arthur’s ears. They’re bright red.”

Kate laughed and reached around her husband to pinch one of Arthur’s ears.

“They’re arguing over books and whether they should go to an art museum tomorrow,” Alan said. “I was telling Eames if Arthur’s busy, maybe someone else would be interested in going to the Cloisters. We’ve never been, have we, Kate?”

Kate murmured that indeed, they had not, while Arthur’s mom narrowed her eyes. Arthur looked down and began to pick at his food.

“Arthur,” she said. “What could you possibly have going on tomorrow that would make you too busy to take Eames to a museum?”

“I was thinking I might meet up with Robert.”

“Well, then Robert can go with you.”

“I don’t think Robert will want to. We were going to—“

“That sounds like his loss then, honey,” Arthur’s mother cut him off. Which was for the best, because Arthur hadn’t quite decided how to end that sentence about what they were _going to_ do, aside from leveling up on Dark Souls, which likely would not have gone over well. “I know, why don’t you invite him for dinner tomorrow?”

“Because it’s Christmas Eve, mom.”

“Well, for after dinner then,” she said, undeterred. Her tone was cheerful and deceptively light again. “His father and Erica should come too. I’ll call and invite them.”

“Okay, great,” Arthur said.

She beamed at him and then gave Eames an exaggerated grimace-smile-shrug that clearly said _Arthur can be so difficult sometimes, can’t he?_ Actually, Arthur couldn’t believe she wasn’t saying those words out loud, wasn’t embarrassingly apologizing for him to everyone. “I think it’s lovely that you want to look at art instead of playing video games all day,” she said to Eames.

Eames looked rooted to the spot, his cheeks flushed, his smile frozen. His eyes on Arthur were apologetic. Whatever, Arthur wasn’t buying it. Eames should fucking know better by now.

He didn’t care that it made him feel six—twelve—okay, eighteen too, when their parents looked away, Arthur mouthed, _I hate you_ to Eames. Eames didn’t even have the decency to say it back. He actually looked miserable, the fucking attention-seeking martyr, and proceeded to drink too much wine—all of which made Arthur drink too much wine—and then they both lost spectacularly in the early rounds of Bite the Bag, to their parents’ uproarious delight. 

   


“Sorry about earlier,” Eames said, when the lights were out and Arthur was lying in his stupid twin bed, trying to pretend he was alone, couldn’t hear Eames’s breathing, and didn’t have rug burn on his face. “It was stupid. You don’t have to come anywhere with me. I mean, it was just an idea. I thought it might be fun. I definitely didn’t mean to make you do anything you don’t want to do. Obviously.”

“Great,” Arthur said. “Well, you have made me. You heard my mom.”

“I’ll just tell her I changed my mind, that I have to do some work. And you can go…hang out with Robert.”

Arthur laughed dryly. “Yeah, right.”

“I’ll tell my Auntie my only wishes are to wear pajamas all day and help her bake the Norwegian Christmas bread.”

“Eames.”

“She loves me. That’ll totally work.”

“ _Eames._ Have you even met my mom? If you haven’t been charming enough to talk her out of making us hang out in twenty three years, what makes you think you’ll be able to do it tomorrow? _”_

Eames went quiet for a long moment. “I’ve never tried before, in twenty three years. Actually, Arthur, I…” He trailed off, and Arthur heard him sigh. “Look,” he said, “It’s your holiday. You should be happy. _I_ should be happy. I will be miserable if I have to spend the day looking at your sad, long face, knowing that I’ve cock-blocked you.”

“You are not cock-blocking me, Jesus,” Arthur huffed. “Ugh, will you just shut up already? I’m going to sleep now.”

He rolled over and pulled a pillow over his head. He knew Eames, and Eames snored.

He heard Eames say, “Good night,” softly, anyway.

“Yeah, good night,” he answered from beneath his pillow.

Even though Eames was the worst, when they were together, Arthur could never leave him hanging.  
  
  


Eames’s snoring didn’t wake Arthur even once, but Arthur had the strangest dreams. When he woke up to the sun-drenched, empty-feeling room and the sound of the shower through the bathroom door, Arthur could only remember the images he’d swum through right before waking, though he had the sensation that his whole night of slumber had been laced through with strange imagery.

His parents had died in a sailing accident. They had been _lost at sea,_ the phrase resounding and repeating again and again throughout the dream, and Arthur had sat in the middle of the empty Brooklyn house crying and crying, the kind of sobs that tear a person apart and make their eyeballs hurt for hours afterwards, the kind of crying he hadn’t done in years. He was bent over, collecting his tears in a teapot, so that he could make tea. And he had to take the train all the way up to Fort Tryon Park to live with his Auntie and Uncle Alan—and Eames. He didn’t want to leave the Brooklyn house, but when he got to the Kellys’ house, it was a castle, and it was the same as the Brooklyn house, and Arthur ran through it, sliding on socked feet, until he was standing before the stained glass window, bathed in its blue glow. His mother and father were sitting on the rock in the sea-tossed image. They were the mer-people on the rock, and then they were the people from Homer’s “Sailing the Catboat,” picnicking on the rock in their smart hats, and Eames stood beside Arthur in the blue glow and whispered to him that he should take the magic through the window to join the picnic and have an adventure. But Arthur wouldn’t go. “I have to meet Robert at the Cloisters,” he kept saying, and Eames looked sad. He needed Eames to take him to the Met to see the suits of armor and find Robert, but Eames had disappeared, and Arthur thought he might be in the window at the picnic laughing with Arthur’s mother, like maybe he had taken Arthur’s place as her son now that Arthur had been spirited away to his real, adventurous life by the magic. The window had grown to takeover a whole wall of the Kelly castle. It was like a cathedral window. Then Arthur was at the Met, and it was twilit with a lush purple light. He ran through the long hall of knights, searching and searching. When he found Eames inside a suit of armor, he felt so relieved. Eames came out and gathered Arthur up and kissed his neck while Arthur pressed and rubbed his body against him—and he could feel Eames’s hard cock and so many warm bites and kisses on his throat, down his shoulder, against his awkward collarbones, before Eames ran away again, and Arthur went through the window after him and became _lost at sea,_ water closing over his head, and Arthur woke up.

Bed. Blue light through his comforter fabric. The water running—the shower. Eames in the shower. Arthur was on his stomach, and his cock was hard. _Lost at sea,_ Eames in the suit of armor, the cathedral window. His parents gone—no, just a dream, his parents downstairs, alive, okay. Running through the purple museum. Oh fuck, he had had another sex dream about Eames. Arthur groaned into his pillow and beat his fists against his mattress in protest. Life wasn’t fair.

Ugh, he had to go into Manhattan with Eames.

His erection persisted, impervious to Arthur’s horror. It seemed an inauspicious start to the day.

The dark omen was borne out when the water stopped running and a still-dripping, towel-wrapped Eames padded softly out of the bathroom before Arthur was finished willing his hard-on away. Then Eames fumbled and dropped his towel while sorting through the clothes on top of his bed.

“Motherfucker,” Arthur grumbled. “Could you just…not. I _am_ awake, you know. Mostly awake.”

“Oh, fuck, sorry,” Eames said, startled, turning and giving Arthur an inadvertent face-full.

“Wow, fuck, really?” Arthur squinted at Eames; it looked like he might be blushing, or maybe he was one of those people who went all lobster under hot water.

“At least it’s not anything you haven’t seen before,” he muttered, turning and bending over—again, seriously, fuck, what the fuck, Eames—to snatch up the towel.

“Not in the last couple decades,” Arthur reminded him, thinking of the photographs of the two of them as toddlers in the bubble bath and deciding he wasn’t going to go beyond that with further implications of Eames’s statement. He had never thought deeply on whether Eames knew he got with more guys than girls—or rather, how much Eames knew about him being queer. He’d just taken it for granted that if his parents knew then his Auntie knew then Eames certainly knew. And there was that whole thing when they were, what, fifteen?

Eames gathered up his clothes and fled back to the bathroom. Arthur rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. To wank or not to wank. Fuck it, he needed to shower anyway. He crawled out of bed and banged on the bathroom door. “Get out. I need to shower. You can change out here.”

“Alright.” Eames stepped out, jeans mercifully fully fastened, an armful of t-shirt and hoodie clutched against his flushed chest. “Go ahead.”

Arthur slid past him quickly, before Eames could glimpse the boner that was too visible through his sweats.

Under the pounding, near-scalding water, he performed the mental jiu jitsu to focus his mind on a composite image of the last few porn vid dudes he’d watched, to wrest his thoughts away from his unsettling dream and the unexpected eyeful of Eames that had far too quickly followed. Only when he was confidently imagining the complete opposite of Eames did he dare snake his hand down around his ready cock and stroke himself until he came, legs trembling and lip bitten silent, all over the tiles.

“Right, then,” he told himself, panting in the aftermath. “This was the worst of today. It’s only going to get better from here.”

A knock on the door. “Take your time,” Eames said. “I’m going downstairs.”

“Just go,” Arthur called. Jesus fuck, Eames.

  
  
 

Arthur pulled on black jeans and his huge, warm, navy blue sweater over his favorite Slowdive shirt and plaid, and he sat on the edge of his bed to lace up his Sambas over thick socks. He had boots for when the weather turned, but while he could he preferred to feel light on his feet. When he fastened on his watch, he saw it was only a little after nine—early enough that the house would still be in a sleepy lull but late enough that all the little kids and runners under the roof would be finished breakfasting and about their business. If he was lucky, he might manage to enjoy some cereal and his coffee in quiet, in the kitchen or a corner of his dad’s study. Since Eames had claimed him for the rest of the day, he could give Arthur a break to read the paper, surely.

Arthur took the stairs in twos, raising his eyes in brief salute to the circle of stained glass that had featured so heavily in his dreams as he flew past. The house did seem very quiet. But when Arthur stepped into the kitchen, his mother was leaning against the counter over the crossword in her running gear, eating half a bagel and twirling her pencil.

“Hey mom,” he said.

“Arthur.” She smiled. “Good morning, sweetheart.”

Eames was standing at the toaster. “Bagels,” he said as Arthur sidled up beside him. “Excellent. Thanks, mom.”

“Thank your father. So when are you boys heading out?” his mom asked.

Arthur shrugged and began to rummage through the brown paper bag of bagels to find one with everything. “It’s up to Eames.”

“Yeah, alright. I, uh, should probably do some work on my laptop today. So, uh, you should do whatever,” Eames said to Arthur. “I can text you later if I finish and there’s still time to go.”

Arthur rolled his eyes at Eames. He took the cinnamon raisin bagel Eames was hacking to pieces away from him and cut it deftly before shoving their bagel halves in the toaster together.

“Nonsense,” his mother was saying. “It’s a holiday, and it’s absolutely beautiful outside! I insist you get out of the house and do something fun. You two only get to see each other once a year. I’m sure whatever you’re working on can wait—until it starts sleeting tomorrow anyway.”

“Yeah, sounds good, mom,” Arthur replied. He began fixing his coffee while Eames asked about his mom’s run. Eames slid around the counter and picked up the bag of coffee as if to help, but he just frowned down at the beans.

“You’re making my coffee too?”

“I’ve never quite figured out how to do pour overs for one. I always make too much. Guess I’m just in the habit of making coffee for two. So, here, give me your cup.”

“Wow, that’s like something out of a sad, old country song.”

“I can see you trying to think of lyrics. Stop it.”

“You could try measuring—you know, the beans you’re grinding and the water. There’s a ratio. It could be…objective.”

“It’s not one size fits all. Every coffee’s different. You have to experiment with all the variables. And yeah, I’m ‘objective’ about it at work. At home, I like how I make it.”

Eames snorted. “Of course you do. I can see you have your method.”

“Watch and learn.”

Eames hung about his side, obedient to the quip.

Arthur took the bag from him. “So you can’t make bagels _or_ coffee,” he muttered. “What can you do?”

“Things,” Eames said. “You’re bossy in the kitchen.”

“Be nice, Arthur. He fancies himself a coffee expert now that he lives in San Francisco,” his mom said. “What’s the name of the Carol who died in the plane crash, seven letters?”

“Lombard,” Eames answered just fractionally ahead of Arthur.

“I don’t ‘fancy myself an expert,’ just a professional,” Arthur said. “It’s a holiday, like you said, and I want to enjoy a pour over. I’m being _nice,_ ” he told his mom. “I’m making one for Eames too, see?”

She scrunched her nose.

“Be right back,” Eames said. “I’m going to grab my laptop.”

Arthur pulled the bagels out of the toaster and swiped cream cheese over them. He could feel the weight of his mother’s gaze on him now that they were alone in the room.

She sighed. “Arthur, can you just—”

Arthur stiffened.

“—think about someone other than yourself for one day?”

“What are you even talking about, mom?” Arthur stared down at his hands; they were steady at his task, good. He breathed in slowly. He was going to stay in control. “Can we not get into this right now, whatever this is?”

“We’re not getting into anything. I’m just telling you that you’re only making yourself look bad when you sulk around and make plans behind my back when you know we have company—”

“Mom—”

“—and treat Eames with disrespect, as if he isn’t one of your oldest friends, who you’ve known all your life.”

“Mom, _stop._ I’m not—I’m not doing any of those things. I am making Eames a bagel. We are going to a museum today. What more do you want from me?”

“Well, you could smile. You could be sociable without me twisting your arm to get you to stay in the room. You could look like it isn’t torture to spend time with your family.”

 _This isn’t fair,_ Arthur wanted to say. _I’ve done everything you wanted me to do from the moment I got home last night._ “I have been smiling,” he said rather inanely, he knew, from somewhere outside his fogged-over brain. “It’s my vacation too.”

His mother sighed loudly. “You know, I just need to lower my expectations whenever you come home. Every time, I think we’re going to have fun together, and you get here, and you’re never any fun. You never help out, and you just want to skulk around your room all day on your computer. Well, fine. You do what you want. Enjoy your _vacation_.” She put a sarcastic emphasis on the word. “But maybe you should think about not coming home next time if you don’t really want to be here.”

“Mom,” Arthur’s voice sounded shaky, and he hated it. “You are being _so_ intense right now. It’s really unfair.”

The water was boiling. 

Eames came into the room and turned the burner off. He stood next to Arthur and put his hand on Arthur’s back, right between his shoulder blades where he felt bow-tight and close to breaking, and the warmth and pressure didn’t feel awful, actually, even though it was Eames.

“I’m going to borrow him now, if you don’t mind,” Eames said to his mom, and his voice sounded bright and gallant, normal. “So we can plan our journey north,” he added grandly.

Her laugh was light, as if she hadn’t been verbally stabbing Arthur just a moment before. It was insane. Arthur couldn’t think. He watched Eames bundle up their bagels in paper towels and shove them in a pocket of the big coat he was wearing now. He kept his hand on Arthur’s back as he pushed him to the door of the kitchen.

“Have fun!” his mom called.

“‘Bye Mom,” Arthur said automatically.

“Bye Auntie,” Eames echoed.

Eames led him to the entrance hall. “You’ve got your shoes, that’s good,” he said. “Wallet? Phone?”

“Yeah. In my back pockets.”

“Great. Coat?” He held Arthur’s peacoat out to him, and Arthur pulled it on. “Scarf?”

“Sure. Unless you think it’s too much blue.” He looked down at his sweater.

“Never.” Eames draped the scarf around his shoulders and wrapped it snug, like Arthur had seen him do a million times with the ducklings. “Keys?” he asked.

“No, but fuck it. There’s always someone here.”

“Then we’re all set.”

Arthur followed Eames down the steps and out the gate, noticing vaguely that Eames had a very green backpack covered in DIY punk-ish buttons and patches slung over one broad shoulder. He was dressed a lot like Arthur, actually—slouchy dark jeans, Converses despite the cold, and a large canvas coat with a ridiculous fur-lined hood over a zip-up sweatshirt; he was wearing a beanie too. 

“Race you to the end of the block?” he asked before Arthur could blurt the next words on his mind: _I feel like I’m going insane._

“Yeah,” he said instead. “But let’s go that way—there’s decent coffee that way.”

“Good thinking. Okay, go!”

Arthur sprinted at Eames’s heels until he could dart around him, and the heavy impact of the sidewalk under his feet, the tight straining in his ribs, and the wind zinging against his face—it was like being a kid again. It was okay. Running knocked something loose in him, and when he got to the end of the block, the frozen, deadened feeling had lifted, and he quickly wiped away what  _might_ have been tears instead of just his eyes watering from the cold.

Arthur got to the end of the block first and stood, teetering, at the edge of the sidewalk. “Thanks,” he said, before he lost the nerve to say it or let his embarrassment freeze up all his words. He wasn’t sure how much of the conversation with his mom Eames had actually heard, and he didn’t really want to ask. “‘Least said, soonest mended’ and all that, but thanks.”

“Whose mantra is that?” Eames asked, panting. “You should talk about it. Before it calcifies inside you and fucks you up.”

“Well, too late for that.”

“I—I wouldn’t mind listening.”

“Noted,” Arthur murmured, already regretting opening the Real Conversation can of worms. “But coffee?”

He watched Eames look up and break into a wide grin as he realized they were standing in front of the tiniest coffee shop. It just a glass door with a peeling, red painted frame that led into a space with room for maybe three people to stand in front of the counter.

“I guess we’ll be taking it to go,” he said.

“There are tables outside when it’s warmer. But I thought we could walk with it anyway.”

“In a rush?”

“Not particularly,” Arthur said carefully, feeling around behind the words for exactly when they had become true, exactly when he had decided to go all in on this Eames adventure. Somewhere between the front door and the end of the block—or the blue scarf, or the moment Eames put his hand at the center of Arthur’s back. “I’m thinking we should make a stop on our way north.”

“Oh?” Eames said, hanging onto his grin.

“Yeah. Shall I tell you, or—”

“No, no. Keep it a surprise. Though if you’re planning on blindfolding me you should at least buy me coffee first.”

Arthur laughed, and a little more strain eased from his chest.

“Come on. I’m just kidding. Let me get the coffee.”

Arthur rolled his eyes. “Alright.”  
  


Arthur consulted his maps app on his phone while Eames obtained them lattes—fancy, but he wasn’t going to argue. If a four dollar espresso drink was going to stand in for an actual conversation about the scene Eames had at least partially witnessed, Arthur could deal.

He certainly didn’t want Eames’s pity, advice, or judgment, but he didn’t want his obliviousness or indifference either, he realized. As an only child, Arthur was used to going it alone; it was weird to think about how Eames was offering him a kind of sibling-ish sympathy. Like, Eames maybe _got it_ , Arthur thought, at least a bit, knowing his mom, and he got Arthur a bit too, actually, which Arthur had spent a long time resenting—why?

“Aren’t you worried about the wrinkles you’re going to get if you scowl like that?” Eames asked, pressing a hot paper cup into his hands that he immediately wrapped his fingers around, grateful for the warmth. “Wrinkles like the Marianas Trench. Like those M marks tabby cats have on their foreheads.”

“ _Now_ I am.”

“Well, don’t be so vain. I can tell your future-wrinkles are going to be adorable. Probably the smiling ones in addition to the scowling ones.”

They walked in silence that Arthur thought he might call companionable, pausing occasionally for Arthur to consult his phone. It was just a short walk—one Arthur had made a few times—so he let himself slurp his drink and look around at all the cheerful holiday people. They passed a couple hefting a Christmas tree up their building stairs and several people toting shopping bags or dressed up children. It was sweet, actually, with the bright sun mitigating the bite of the cold and the holiday trappings giving their bundled-up-ness and little mission deeper meaning. Eames started humming "Greensleeves"—no, the carol, probably, the one they’d played together last night.

“Do you like this time of year?” Arthur asked.

“Do you mean winter? Or Christmas?”

“Christmas, I guess.”

“Hmm. Yeah, I like all the rituals. My parents let me help out with everything for the ducklings now, like doing their stockings. They get so excited. It’s fun.” After a moment he added, “They love spending it with you and your folks best, you know.”

“Yeah, our parents really go all out when they get together.”

Eames was quiet, and when Arthur glanced over at him, his lips were parted, and he wore a hesitant expression.

“You can just say it, whatever you’re thinking.”

“Is your mom—is she always like that with you? I mean, when we’re not around.”

“Critical?” Arthur wanted to label it before Eames did. “It comes and goes. You know, a lot of times she’s really kind and a lot of fun, and sometimes she’s really intense. I guess it’s the alcohol.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize—”

“That our parents drink like fish? I guess your mom can handle it better than mine.” Arthur paused. “Sorry. That sounded harsher than I—”

“No, it’s okay.”

“The kind of things she says—I don’t mind. I’m used to it. I’ve heard it all before.” He swallowed. “It’s more that it…sucks that it’s unpredictable. Like, you never know when stuff’s going to be fine with her and when she’s going to come at you.”

“Oh,” Eames said again. “I didn’t—I really didn’t realize. I’m not sure _how_ I never realized. I’m sorry.”

Arthur started to get a squirmy, uncomfortable weight in his stomach. Fuck, he hated talking about this, and he wasn’t sure he was saying the right things. He had barely talked about any of this before, so it was like throwing half-formed thoughts out into the air and seeing which ones felt right, took on the right form. And it felt awful, saying bad things about his mom, when he was supposed to be the main person in her corner. “Anyway, she’s always really happy when she’s with your mom. Sometimes she tells me that that was the best time of her life, when they were at school and those years they lived together in the city.”

“My mom talks about that time a lot too,” Eames said.

 _Except not in the same way, I bet,_ Arthur thought. _The happiest she’s ever been. Because your mom’s actually happy being married to your dad and having you and the ducklings, having your family._

“Here we are,” he said.

“The giant library and not the hot dog truck, I’m assuming?”

“Perceptive. Though I am pretty hungry, now that you mention it.”

They stood at the top of the library stairs and wolfed down their bagels, and then Eames followed Arthur through the security scanners, across the lobby to a map, up some stairs, and into the stacks. After a few moments of wandering and poking around, they wound up in the Young Adult section, and Arthur plucked down _Annie on My Mind_ and pressed it into Eames’s hands.

“There you go,” he whispered. “I figure if we’re going to the Cloisters, we better have your guidebook.”

“Thank you,” Eames enthused, turning the book over in his hands, running his fingers over the stiff library binding. “This is…” He trailed off and just smiled at Arthur, who looked away, overcome with a fidgety feeling at the eye contact. “It’s great.”

“Should we get those owl and elephant books for your sisters while we’re here?”

They walked to the subway, books in hand, after Eames obtained a library card—“You’re the one who lives here,” Arthur had reasoned—and checked out _Owl at Home, Uncle Elephant,_ and _Annie on My Mind_. When they’d transferred from the G to the A, they sat next to each other, and Eames opened his backpack to tuck the Lobel books away.

“Oh, damn, it was here all along,” he said, fishing out his own battered paperback copy of _Annie on My Mind_ and handing it to Arthur with a sheepish expression.

“Oh well,” Arthur said. “I guess we’ll each have a copy to look at now. So, are you going to explain the magical properties of this book to me, or what?”

Arthur opened the book seemingly at random, though he expected the loved, yellowing pages had absorbed Eames’s preferences and were primed to fall open to a special place. He read:

 

 

 

> _Annie picked up her pack and said matter-of-factly, “Are you hungry for lunch? Or should we go in and look around? The sad virgin,” she said, looking dolefully down at the ground, imitating one of my favorite statues; “the angry lion?” She made a twirling motion above her mouth and I knew right away she was impersonating the wonderful lion fresco in the Romanesque Hall; he has a human-looking mustache. “Or”—she stood up and glanced nervously around the garden, one wrist bent into a graceful, cautious hoof—“or the unicorns?”_
> 
> _“Unicorns,” I said, amazed at the speed with which she could go from one character to another and still capture the essence of each._
> 
> _“Good,” she said, dropping her hand. “I like them best.” She smiled._
> 
> _I got up, saying, “Me, too,” and we stood there facing each other for a moment, not saying anything more. Then Annie, as if she’d read my thoughts, said softy, “I don’t know if I believe any of this is happening or not.”_
> 
> _But before I could answer she gave me a little push and said, in a totally different voice, “Come on! To the unicorns!”  
>  _
> 
>  

Eames reached over and gently tugged the pages free from where Arthur’s fingers pinned them; he flipped ahead a few pages, then a few more. “Here,” he said softly, laying a finger near the bottom of page 75. “Try this part here.”

Arthur huffed but complied, digging in again and re-orienting himself in a scene where the narrator and Annie met on a different day, rode the ferry all afternoon, and then walked around Staten Island looking at the little houses, talking about which ones they’d choose to live in if they could.

 

 

 

> _“We’re in Richmond,” Annie said suddenly, startling me. “We’re early settlers and…” Then she stopped and I could feel, rather than see, that she was shaking her head. “No,” she said softly. “No, I don’t want to do that with you so much any more.”_
> 
> _“Do what?”_
> 
> _“You know. Unicorns. Maidens and knights…I don’t want to pretend any more. You make me—want to be real.”_
> 
> _I was looking for some way to answer that when a woman came out of a house across the street, carrying a mesh shopping bag and leading a little dog on a leash. When she reached the corner, she put the shopping bag into the dog’s mouth and said, “Good Pixie, good girl, carry the bag for Mommy,” and we both burst into helpless laughter._
> 
> _When we stopped laughing, I said, awkwardly, “I’m glad you want to be real, but—well, please don’t be too real. I mean…”_
> 
>  

“Seems sweet,” Arthur said finally, lowering the book. “Very dated, but not in a bad way—just, like, it feels how I thought New York was when I was a kid, you know? Like New York from _It’s Like This, Cat_ and—and so many proto-YA chapter books from the elementary school library that I’ll never remember the names of, ever.”

Eames grinned. He was still leaning into Arthur, his hands tangled up with Arthur’s in his lap, lingering on the book, as if it was a talisman they could better draw power from together—or as if they were playing piano, examining a piece of music in tandem. “Yes,” he said, “Exactly. Except this is my _It’s Like This, Cat_ , and I’ve finally remembered it and found it again.”

“What?” Arthur said, confused. He could only turn his head a little bit to look at Eames because they were so close; he’d be in danger of brushing their noses together and bringing their mouths into awkward too-close-to-not-think-about-kissing proximity.

“I loved this book when I was a kid,” Eames said against Arthur’s cheek.

“I thought it was from your class,” Arthur replied weakly.

“It is, but I also read it—I first read it—when I was in middle school, in the library, exactly like you said. I forgot all about it for years, and then I didn’t know how to go about finding it again. I just remembered that it was about these girls who were also knights, and one of them wrote the other letters. Not exactly a Google-able description.”

“Is that what it’s about?”

Eames laughed and shook his head slightly. His hair tickled Arthur’s ear. “Not really. Annie and Liza do pretend to be knights, like I told you, and there are sort of letters…” He trailed off wistfully.

Arthur’s heart sank, so he rushed to ask, “So then the book wound up as part of this class, and you rediscovered it?”

Eames drew back, reclaimed his hands, and started paging through the library copy. “Yeah. As soon as I saw the cover, I knew. It was awesome. Annie,” he murmured, closing the book to tap the dark haired girl on the cover illustration with a large thumb. “I can’t believe I forgot her. That I forgot the whole thing for so long.”

“It’s a pretty cover.” Arthur leaned into Eames and re-established their huddle to peer at the library copy instead of the one he was holding. The image was of two girls with their heads bowed together. Their foreheads were touching, and their hands met in a way that made Arthur think of Romeo and Juliet’s shared sonnet with the blushing pilgrims and the holy palmers’ kiss; there was great tenderness in the touch. “She’s pretty,” he said, looking at the girl on the left—Annie—whose black hair fell long past her shoulders with some strands tucked behind her ear, contrasting with her porcelain complexion and blush.

Eames smiled. “Yeah. If I could look however I wanted as a girl, I would want to look like that,” he murmured. “Well, maybe a little more punk rock.” Before Arthur could pounce on the words and wonder, he went on. “It would be a good upper arm tattoo, don’t you think? Like, the two of them right here—?” He sketched out the dimensions and placement with his fingers against Arthur’s bicep. Arthur wished, randomly, that he wasn’t wearing his coat; his many layers kind of ruined the effect. Still, he could see it.

“You should get it. Do you have any already?”

Eames shook his head. Then he sighed. “Do you promise not to tell my parents? Or, God forbid, yours?”

“Why would mine be worse?”

“Come on. The only thing worse than my folks finding out I have tattoos would be them finding out from someone else that I have tattoos.”

“Fair enough. So where are they?” Arthur squinted a little and tried to remember how Eames had looked that morning when he’d gotten out of the shower and dropped his towel. Then he groaned and shook his head.

“What was that?”

“I was trying to remember if I saw them this morning when you flashed me, but then I realized that involved picturing you naked,” Arthur grumbled, still making a face.

Eames grinned delightedly, revealing his slightly crooked teeth. Everything about him was wabi-sabi, from his teeth to his mussy hair, from his one untied sneaker to the the hand drawn patches on his coat. “You were picturing me naked!” he crowed.

“I was trying _not_ to picture you naked. I can’t believe you flashed me, you ditz.”

Eames just grinned more widely, and he tugged up the sleeve of his coat and hoodie to reveal a black wolf on his forearm. Then he peeled back the hoodie from his stomach to show a line of bold gothic script above his hip. “There’s two of them, anyway.”

“Wow, that one’s huge. I must be blind.”

“You were blinded by something more blinding.” Eames elbowed him.

“Ugh.”

“It’s my dick,” Eames whispered, expression very serious. “I’m talking about my dick.”

“Ugh, I know. Just stop. You’re the worst, Jesus,” Arthur said, trying extremely hard not to smile; the muscles around his mouth felt funny from the effort.

“I don’t think we’ve ever talked about books like this before,” Arthur said a few moments later. “I was always reading when we’d get together, but I never saw you with a book.” Arthur stopped, realizing how that sounded. “I mean—you know what I mean.”

“I wanted to hang out with you.” Eames shrugged. “Or listen to what the adults were talking about. You know, visiting stuff. I read a lot at home, when it wasn’t a special occasion.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Arthur, I wasn’t going to mention it, but—I keep thinking about all those postcards I sent you—and how you never sent anything back.”

Arthur felt a swooping rush of awfulness. He opened his mouth to argue— _don’t say_ never, _I wrote to you before college_ —but he didn’t say anything.

“Why?” Eames asked.

And then, without quite meaning to, he let loose all of the thoughts about Eames’s unwelcome letters that he’d been stewing in. He just burst: “Why did _you_ keep writing _me_? Nobody sends mail anymore. Like, if you reach out to someone and they don’t get back to you, maybe they don’t want to, and you can’t keep trying and then get mad that they don’t get back to you. 'Cause it’s like you’re not getting the message they’re sending.”

Arthur stopped suddenly, horrified and half-hoping it showed on his face. What he had said—it was true, had been true—but it was like his brain was a few steps behind his heart. He actually didn’t want Eames to stop writing him now, not after this morning. He thought he should say something to that effect, but it was as if his mouth was gummed up with peanut butter; he couldn’t speak. He was just waiting for Eames to explode at him, to tell him to fuck right off then.

“Alright, fair enough.” Arthur heard Eames sigh. “I—I didn’t mean to sound accusatory. I guess it’s a hard thing to ask without sounding accusatory.” He pulled his beanie off and ran his hands through his hair, clutching at it, making it look ridiculous. “Forget it. I didn’t mean for it to be creepy or pushy. I won’t write you anymore.”

Arthur’s face felt tight and hot. “I read them, the cards you sent. Most of them. I have them all in my planner. I started writing you back yesterday, on the plane.”

“Yesterday on the plane,” Eames repeated, dropping his hands and shaking his head; he wasn’t frowning—his face was blank. Then he laughed a little bit, but it wasn’t a particularly warm laugh. “Well, alright then. I guess you know where to find me if you ever finish.”

“I don’t really though. Unless you’re staying in New York.”

“Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. Anyway,” Eames said, but then he didn’t say anything else.

“Anyway,” Arthur agreed with fake cheer because apparently he was just being a douche today and was making everybody unhappy, and there was nothing he could do about it.

They sat in silence. The train rumbled, and the people around them avoided looking at them. Arthur let _Annie on My Mind_ rest splayed over one spread thigh. Annie and Liza swooned at each other, not regarding him with the recrimination he felt for himself, not regarding him at all. He pulled out his phone and unlocked it, opened up Robert’s texts, then swiped away from them—not just because he didn’t want Eames to look over and see them, but also because it was depressing that Robert hadn’t texted him back since last night. Like couldn’t he have said something? _Sorry, busy, can’t come over—?_ Arthur wondered if his mom would actually call and invite Robert’s family to Christmas Eve drinks. If they would come. Well, they might. Stranger things…

“Say something,” Eames muttered.

“What?”

“Ask me something. Anything. I am pretty sure we are almost to our stop”—Arthur followed his gaze to the lights marking their progress on the route map—“and I don’t want to spend the rest of the day with us not talking. Or being mad at each other.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Arthur sort of lied. He’d have to think about it more, suss out his feelings, but maybe he felt—irritated with Eames. But also embarrassed and chagrined at himself. All mixed up, really.

“Well, I’m mad at you,” Eames said.

Arthur frowned. “So I’m just supposed to start talking about something random, and we’ll forget this ever happened?”

“Put it on pause, how ‘bout? I just…” Arthur looked over at Eames. He had his eyes closed and one hand at his temple, his fingers pressed into his hair again. Like Arthur was physically paining him. “I just want to go to the Cloisters with you,” he said in a small, almost petulant voice that reminded Arthur of the Eames of yore. The Eames who had cried when they started sword-fighting with their corn dogs and Arthur knocked his corn dog into the dirt, to be eaten by the German Shepherd. His tears had totally undermined the glory of Arthur’s corn dog jousting victory.

“Don’t worry, duck,” Arthur said, swallowing his pride and putting his hand on Eames’s knee. “I will get you a new corn dog. And,” he inhaled deeply, fortifying himself. “And we will have a nice day at the Cloisters. We will see the knights. We can _be_ the knights, if you want.” He leaned close, close, to Eames, whose eyes were still shut, and whispered against his ear, “I am prepared to LARP with you.”

Eames shook with startled laughter and, haltingly, placed his hand atop Arthur’s. “You,” he said, voice thick. “Sometimes I don’t recognize you at all, and then all the sudden you’ll be the person I’ve known forever.”

Arthur barely hesitated as he laced their fingers together. Now _his_ throat felt tight, damn it; he pushed through, keeping his tone light. “Please don’t tell my mom I made you cry,” he said.

Eames laughed again. He squeezed Arthur’s hand. “You’re so full of yourself. You didn’t even.”

“Hmmph.”

They were quiet for a moment. Arthur stared at their clasped hands, then out the window. The sunlight was welcome after the long ride underground through Manhattan. He wondered when he should pull his hand away and how he might do so gracefully. The contact was becoming too much, too suggestive. He had held hands with Eames plenty when they were little kids, but other than that, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d platonically held hands with a friend, the last time he’d touched anyone—well, anyone who wasn’t a girl—in a gesture of pure comfort. Which was fucked, really. Stupid fucking masculine dude culture.

“Should I still say anything, ask a question?”

“Sure.” Eames undid his fingers from Arthur’s but left their hands touching, and suddenly Arthur felt less sure about his question.

“What you said about being a girl—it sounded like—well, are you kind of a girl?”

“Mmm?”

“I saw your patch,” Arthur said, looking toward the GENDER REBEL rectangle of denim, adorned with a wobbly rendering of the Star Wars rebel insignia overlaid with the transgender symbol.

“Oh, yeah.” Eames pulled his hand away entirely and touched the patch on his upper arm—the tattoo spot, Arthur thought. He wrapped his arms across his chest to do so, a protective gesture. “Well, I’m genderqueer. Non-binary. I know that much, so far.”

“So far?”

“Gender infinity and all that.” He shrugged. “I’m still figuring it out. But—so—I want to say I’m a bit of a girl, yeah.”

“Mmm.”

“Do you—do you know what those terms mean? Like, non-binary?”

Arthur nodded.

“Are you…surprised?”

“Um. I don’t know.” Arthur frowned. He had a lot of questions and wondered if he could ask them.

“My tattoos, my gender identity,” Eames murmured. “My body.” A quick flash of that full, warm smile. “I’m exposing all kinds of things to you today, Arthur.”

 _I’m grateful,_ Arthur thought. But he said, “And you saw me with my mother.”

“Yeah.”

“Will you tell me more?” Arthur asked, because he wasn’t ready to talk about his mother, and the questions tumbled free. “Like, are you out to your family? Have I been using the wrong pronouns? Are you going to transition?”

Eames stared out the train window. “Not really, no. Not in any meaningful sense. That’s for your first question. They know I’ve always been gender non-conforming. I don’t want to say they don’t care. It’s more that they’re not very observant. They’re so wrapped up in my sisters. You’d think they’d be more into the idea of me as ‘the oldest son,’ you know? But I think they were always more into the idea of me as the babysitter.”

They chuckled together, but it wasn’t really funny. “Huh,” Arthur said, his mental image of Eames expanding further still.

“And no. I’m still using he/him pronouns. Though I’d be down with whatever, really.”

“Noted.”

“Maybe I’ll change at some point. I’ve been thinking about trying they/them soon. Though—parents. I’ll let you know.”

“Cool.”

Eames smiled at him. “You’re actually a chill person to come out to, you know that?”

Arthur smiled back.

“How about you? Do you have any gender revelations for me?”

“Ah,” Arthur’s smile broadened, and he shook his head. “I—uh—I guess not. Definitely something I should think about more. Gender infinity,” he said, lingering on the words. “I like that. I guess you—I guess you know that I’m queer.”

“As in into guys?”

“Among other genders.” He looked up at the map again, feeling ridiculously self-conscious about explaining himself to Eames right after Eames had claimed his gender fluidity—which was silly. Eames obviously wouldn’t think Arthur was coming onto him just by stating a preference that included him. They were practically cousins. “I’d say bi,” he continued, “But I’m attracted to genderqueer people too. Pansexual? Historically, I’ve mostly just been with guys though.”

“You’re flushed all bright pink,” Eames said, and Arthur definitely wasn’t going to look at him. He felt Eames poke his cheek with one finger, and he leaned away with a grunt of protest. “It’s okay. I am too. We don’t grow up learning how to talk about this stuff with our family—or, I mean, with the people we care about—so of course it feels awkward. Which is rubbish. It’s okay.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Arthur said, relaxing just a bit and daring to meet Eames’s warm, greenish eyes. Then he remembered something and frowned. “You always give me so much shit about Robert. Even though you were the one who—“ He caught himself. “I mean, what’s that about?”

“You couldn’t possibly have thought that was me giving you shit about being queer?” Eames’s eyes widened.

“I guess not,” Arthur admitted.

“Let’s not talk about Robert,” Eames cut in before Arthur could say anything else, effectively pulling another conversational fiat. Arthur wasn’t sure how he felt about these roadblocks and detours Eames had now twice insisted on. On the one hand, it was refreshing to talk with someone who could express his own boundaries—and who could move past hurt feelings without needing to nurse the wounds of words-landed-wrong until they festered. On the other hand, it was undemocratic. What if Arthur _wanted_ to talk about Robert? Eames and Robert? Did he? He scowled and bit his lip.

“It’s just a suggestion,” Eames added, softly. “Just—it’s really fun getting along with you right now. And our stop’s next. If you’re dead set on it, maybe give me twenty minutes, and then you can shout me down with the Hudson river as a dramatic backdrop?”

Arthur rolled his eyes. “ _You’re_ a dramatic backdrop. To my life.”

   


They got off the train and made their way to the street, where they spent a few minutes peering at the map on Arthur’s phone. Other disembarking passengers dispersed around them, some undoubtedly on their way to the museum as well.

“Let’s hold up a moment, maybe make another stop,” Eames said. “I think we might need some provisions. I don’t know how you’re feeling, but I could use something more fortifying than a bagel.”

“Bagels are the most fortifying,” Arthur murmured, zooming out the map. “But yeah, I could eat.”

“Let’s have a picnic.”

“Alright. We don’t have a basket or a blanket, and you do realize it’s freezing.”

“It’s not _freezing._ ”

It was actually still rather pleasant—just as briskly sunny and crisp in Upper Manhattan as in Brooklyn. “I’m guessing that Liza and Annie’s picnic doesn’t take place in the middle of December?”

“You saw the picnic part!”

“I may have skimmed past that section,” Arthur admitted. “Maybe you can read it to me. You’re still the tour guide of this literary adventure, you know.”

They had begun to walk toward what looked promisingly like a bodega on Arthur’s phone, and they bantered about what might constitute an appropriate midwinter bodega-bought picnic. At its threshold, Arthur’s phone, still palmed, began to vibrate; Robert was calling. Which was unusual. They mostly texted. Mindful of Eames’s ban on Robert-related conversation, Arthur nodded that Eames should step in without him. “Give me a minute,” he said, taking a few steps from Eames, who nodded, shrugged, and ducked into the store.

Arthur answered. “Hello?”

Robert’s voice, mellow, familiar. “Hey, how’s it going?”

“It’s going,” Arthur said, lining up the toes of his sneakers with a spray-paint stencil of Yoda on the sidewalk. “What’s up?”

“Not much. I’m right by you at our coffee place. You didn’t text me back, so I figured I’d call. Are you off house arrest yet? ”

“Sort of.” Arthur smiled in the direction of the bodega’s propped open door. Inside, at the counter, surrounded by multi-colored candy and chip packaging, Eames’s solid form loomed. He appeared to be engaged in a spirited conversation with the guy behind the counter. From his angle, Arthur couldn’t see what kind of goods he was speedily amassing. Their picnic food and the fancy coffee—Arthur made a mental note to pay Eames back.

“Are you there?” Robert asked. He sounded kind of hurried all of the sudden, maybe annoyed. But that was Robert. Zero to sixty, hot and cold.

“Yeah, sorry. How was dinner with Erica last night?”

Robert snorted. “It was stiff by our standards, probably heathen by yours.”

“Hey!”

“Okay, your mom’s standards. Speaking of which, she called this morning and invited us all over to your place tonight. I think Erica is actually considering it.”

“You should come.”

“Seriously? You’re not going to beg me to avoid the train wreck and stay away?”

“Eh. I think I’m getting into my mom’s good graces today. Besides she already went off on me this morning. _Besides_ ,” Arthur said quickly, instantly frustrated with himself for mentioning that, “You know all the parents would love to see you.”

“Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll stop by, at least. Or I can just come over now while I’m here. Are you up yet?”

“Funny story. I’m actually in the city with Eames. We’re going to the Cloisters. I think we’ll be back at my place in…a few hours though.” It was still pretty early. “Like we’ll be back by four or five definitely.”

Robert made a skeptical humming sound. “Alright,” he said. “I bet there’s a story behind that one. Your mom rope you into it?”

“Well, it wasn’t like I had other plans. I thought you were going to text me back last night when you finished with dinner.”

Robert sighed. “Yeah, sorry ‘bout that. It went late, and we got sucked back into our game. And besides, I figured I’d see you this morning for coffee.”

“Hey, I have to go,” Arthur said, watching Eames emerge from the store and inch toward him with exaggerated slow steps, eyebrows raised. “Just come over tonight.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Just come over. I want to see you,” Arthur said quickly, eager to get off the line before Eames got all up in his call.

“We’ll see each other before you leave,” Robert promised. Then he laughed. “Have fun with Eames.” The way he said it, it was clear that he didn’t think such a thing was possible.

Arthur rolled his eyes and ended the call; he flipped over to his texts and saw that he must have missed Robert’s _what’s up_ and _coffee?_ while he and Eames were bickering—bantering—picnic planning—whatever they were doing. “You going to show me what you got?”

“Nope,” Eames said, looking at Arthur intently. “Not until we get to our picnic spot.” He bent to zip the black plastic bag of things into his backpack. Arthur reached out and touched the fur that lined the hood of his ridiculous coat. It was very soft. Eames turned his face up, and Arthur’s fingers slipped to graze his hair, the curve of his jaw, before he dropped his hand awkwardly. Eames on his knees in front of Arthur was _too much_ ; it made Arthur think of his dream, the details of which still hung fuzzily at the back of his mind.

“Get up,” he bit out, his hoarse voice more cross than he’d intended, and the fond expression on Eames face became something more knowing—interested yet wary. He clambered back to his feet without Arthur’s assistance.

They made their way on a well-marked path toward the Cloisters, a ramble through a walled park above the wide, gray river. There was a woman several yards in front of them toting a heavy bag, perhaps of painting gear, and wearing a long, bright red coat; she was like a cardinal amidst the browns and grays of the foot path, the dead foliage, and the slender trunks of the elms that partially obscured the little fortress on the bluff ahead.

Arthur couldn’t hold in the image. “Isn’t she like a cardinal?” he said, hesitatingly, in hushed tones, leaning a little closer to Eames.

He gave Arthur a long look, taking him in, and then his eyes lit up. “Yes,” he said simply.

Emboldened, Arthur continued. “She’s leading us—she knows the way to some secret garden, to some perfect perch where we can lie in wait for the unicorns.”

“The unicorns,” Eames repeated, eyes wide. “The cardinal knows the way…Will we see them, then?”

“Yes.” Arthur leaned closer still. “Wait, are you a virgin?”

Eames gasped and gave Arthur a light shove. “Upon what grounds do you insult my honor, sir?”

He was being loopy. He should probably draw back. But he couldn’t, suddenly. “Forgive me, my lady. I should beg a thousand pardons. I only meant to begin upon a subject of interest to a maiden who would acquaint herself with the fair beast—the habit of the unicorn to shrink from the touch of any not of the utmost purity.”

“I never said I wished to touch the beast,” Eames said primly. “To gaze upon him, perhaps to capture his image with my meager artistic skill, is more than I’ve dared hope.”

“My lady shall have that pleasure,” Arthur declared. “I swear it.”

Eames gazed at Arthur with wondering adoration. He was as good at this make-believe acting stuff now as he’d been when they were children, playing Robin Hood or Lothlorien elves in the yard. “You swear it?”

Arthur nodded. What came next? “On my honor as a knight.”

“At lovers’ perjuries, they say Jove laughs,” Eames quipped. Then, in a brighter voice: “You’ve encountered the unicorns before.”

“Yes, fascinating creatures. My lady’s curiosity is well directed.”

“I suppose, sir, you have walked with many young maidens in these gardens.”

It was Arthur’s turn to shove Eames, who side-stepped him neatly. He pulled up the fur-lined hood of his jacket, so that his expression was partially obscured.

“I—“ Arthur scrambled. “I—does the lady doubt my intentions, then?”

Eames paused. Arthur skipped ahead a pace, stepping in front of him, attempting to see his face.

“If you say _entirely_ you will break my heart,” Arthur continued.

“Well, not _entirely._ But you must admit, sir, you have given me no proof of your good intentions.”

“Proof? Have I not given you my word as a knight that I will safely shepherd you to find, um, what your heart desires—to see the unicorn beasts. I will defend your honor with my life.”

“Hmm. You are very gallant, sir.”

“And you are very coy.”

Eames raised an eyebrow and mouthed “coy?” back at Arthur, who shrugged and made a face. Eames stuck out his tongue. “Would that I had more cunning to be strange,” he said, another bit of Shakespeare, the cheat.

Arthur murmured, “You’re plenty strange.” He was caught up in searching his pockets. Eames stepped on his foot. “Ow—Aha!” He pulled out a loosely hemmed square of fading calico, blue flowers and green vines wending across a cream-colored background.

“So that’s what you’re flagging these days,” Eames said with a leer. “You going to tell me which pocket you fished that out of?”

Arthur huffed, glared, cleared his throat loudly.

“Come on,” Eames mouthed. “Give a girl a clue.”

“I’m trying to given you a token,” Arthur gritted out. Then he presented the handkerchief with a flourish. “Humble tribute to my lady’s great _modesty_ and _virtue._ Please accept this token of my great regard for—”

Eames grabbed the handkerchief and rubbed the soft fabric between his fingers, froze, looked at Arthur.

Arthur sighed, made a get-on-with-it gesture. “Don’t worry. I didn’t blow my nose in it, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Eames lifted the fabric to his cheek. “Your colors, knight, are very lovely.” He held the calico back to Arthur.

Who felt a little thwarted, bizarrely. “It’s for you.”

“And now I am _bestowing_ it on you. If you’ll be my champion.”

Eames’s greenish eyes were sparkling, and Arthur, suddenly, felt heart-swellingly _glad_. Impulsively, he lowered himself to one knee and bowed his head. The asphalt of the path was rough through his jeans, and his gaze was on Eames’s dingy green sneakers with their bold red laces. The aged rubber was drawn on here and there in fine-lined sharpie: a string of scribbled-in hearts, a little tornado, the word _love_ printed carefully in Arabic.

“My lady, you honor me beyond words. I will be your champion.” 

Eames pressed the handkerchief into his hand, and Arthur rose to his feet again, wobbling slightly. They grinned at each other.

Whoops and cheers in the lilting tones of children’s voices shattered the moment and made Arthur whirl around, his cold-tingling extremities singing instantly with a hot blush. There was a cluster of children—they looked around the ages of Eames’s sisters—stopped on the path behind them, watching them with round, interested eyes. Their parents looked on with amusement. Eames waved to the kids and began to laugh.

Arthur, still burning up, raised a hand in a tentative wave. It was the hand in which he clutched Eames’s token, and the kids cheered again.

The adults ushered the kids into motion, beyond Arthur and Eames and up the path.

“You make a good knight,” a little girl with long braids and a robot shirt told Arthur as she traipsed past. “And you make a good princess,” she told Eames judiciously.

They were silent for a moment as the family walked out of earshot. Arthur looked around with a sigh and then folded the calico up into a small triangle that he tucked into his jacket pocket.

“I’m afraid we’ve lost our cardinal,” Eames said, smiling widely at Arthur.

 _I’m afraid we’ve lost our minds,_ Arthur thought. But he wasn’t that embarrassed, after all. He smiled back. “It’s alright. Come on, princess. I know the way.”  
  
  


He didn’t really, because he’d never been to the Cloisters before, but Eames seemed content to follow him. They wandered around Fort Tryon Park, picking the branching paths that hugged the view of the Hudson, passing through terraced lawns and gardens.

“I bet it’s really pretty here in the spring and summer, when all the flowers are in season.”

“I think it’s beautiful now.” Eames stopped along the stone wall they’d just reached to look down on the wide river. His hood was still pulled up, and he had his hands buried in the pockets of his coat.

“Are you warm enough?” Arthur asked. “Are you sure you want to picnic before we go in?”

“Yeah, I’m alright. How about over there?”

They settled on a bench, not having any extra layers to blanket the ground or make some of the invitingly flat rocks that crept up the hill behind them less bone-chilling.

“Oh my God,” Arthur laughed. “If our moms knew we were going to have a picnic, they would have outfitted us so hard.”

“We would have had to haul a metric ton of picnic gear around all day,” Eames agreed.

“Would have had a blanket though. And a proper picnic meal.”

“Hey now!” Eames said, pulling the black plastic bodega bag out of his backpack. “No need to be disparaging. I happen to have put together a very proper picnic lunch for us. For starters, we have—“

He pulled two Old English forties out of the bag and set them on the bench between him and Arthur, followed by a bottle of orange juice.

“—the finest mead money can buy, AKA the brass monkey.”

Arthur snorted, then laughed.

“And some, um, crisps.” He dumped several small bags of potato chips and Hot Cheetos into Arthur’s lap. “Ah, help me out here, Arthur.”

Arthur picked up a bag of Cheetos. “Sorry, I got nothing. What did medieval people eat? Bread and cheese?”

“Right then, the Cheetos can be the bread and cheese.”

“More like corn and cheese.”

“Corn is so New World, darling.”

“What else do you have in there?”

“Um, pickles.”

“Pickles?”

“And, ah, those croissants with ham and cheese. That’s all,” he said apologetically, holding up the empty bag.

Arthur was still laughing. He picked up a croissant, now cooled and surely congealed. “Eames, _this_ would be the bread and the cheese.”

“Can’t they both be the bread and the cheese?”

“Right. And the pickles?”

“Well…I think the pickles can be themselves, yeah?”

“Bread and cheese and pickles and mead,” Arthur said, surveying the multi-colored, packaged bounty. “You’re right, my lady. A very proper feast.” He tore open a bag of chips and watched Eames twist the caps off their forties with his broad hands. “Shouldn’t we have brown bags for these?”

“I forgot them.” He didn’t sound too perturbed. “Just—I don’t know—be sneaky. Alright.” He passed Arthur his forty. “Down to the label now.”

“Is this a race?”

“Could be.”

Arthur shivered, gulping down the cold, fizzy malt drink. Despite his best efforts, Eames beat him. He grinned as Arthur hiccoughed against the back of his hand. “Cute.”

“Hush you. Did they teach you chugging in princess finishing school?”

“If you mean Masters, you know they did.”

At a nod from Eames, Arthur topped their bottles off with the orange juice. They sat quietly for a while, eating and sipping from their bottles.

“Do you know—” Arthur began, but then he stopped himself with a large gulp before he said something asinine and doubtless insulting, such as, ‘this is actually fun’ or ‘you’re actually pretty cool and unexpectedly comforting when you’re not shoving me off tricycles or—.’ Better stop that thought right there. He began again. “Are you really not sure you’ll be in New York much longer?”

Eames wasn’t watching him. He was staring out at the far side of the river. “I sorta said that because—well, yeah, you know. But honestly, I’m not sure. I think about moving a lot. Being here was supposed to be a temporary thing, just the duration of my post-bac program.”

“Where would you go? Like right into some MFA program?”

Eames shrugged. Arthur noticed he was shredding the corner of the Old E label with his thumbnail and wondered if it was a deliberate use of energy or an unconscious fidget. What was it they had said in undergrad about picking at bottle labels? Sexual frustration. Arthur shook his head, as if to clear it, and looked back up to Eames’s face. “I don’t know. Wish I felt like traveling the world or something, like I used to talk about when we were younger.”

“You were insufferable talking about that.”

“Bad timing, I guess. It’s probably something about this developmental moment or whatnot, but now I’d rather really sink into a place, learn it inside and out, all its dives, parks, and places where important streets intersect. Learn the cool venues, places to see shows. The best beach. Build community.” He gave Arthur a tentative smile.

Arthur tilted his head, considered Eames as if he were a stranger—thin brown hair, all fluttery from the wind and mussed from his beanie. His crinkly greenish eyes thoughtful. A smudge of stubble and the small scar on his chin that Arthur was pretty sure was connected to a structurally unsound tree house but might have actually been connected to a lacrosse accident at Masters. “I’m biased, but it sounds like you’re describing the Bay,” he said finally.

“Mm.” Eames didn’t get dismissive like he expected; he got curious, his lips parting. “Oh?” And then, “Don’t worry. I won’t follow you to your city.”

He said it with a kind of teasing lilt, but Arthur frowned. It wasn’t like he had a monopoly on the West Coast or something. Eames would probably like Oakland if he visited. Arthur could picture him up the coast in Point Reyes, out past the redwoods and oyster farms, bundled up in his heavy-hooded princess coat on a magical, gray beach, admiring a twisted kelp monster tossed up the sand by treacherous surf. One of those beaches you could only get to after driving hours on twisty, horror movie roads, away from sunshine toward mist and fog.

One time Arthur drove up the coast past Point Reyes—past Russian River, past Gualala—with one of his summer boyfriends. The road danced this way and that, hugging the curves of the coast, these great craggy cliffs above little finger-nail moon beaches or rock islands where seabirds lived. It was beautiful but not pleasant, making Arthur think of the _The Secret Garden_ again, of the moor. There were these strange, sprawling houses out there on the cliffs; they watched the ocean with big, steady eyes, walls of windows. The sky was reflected in the glass, hiding their interiors. What kind of people lived up against the ocean away from everything? And why was Arthur picturing Eames in one of these stately houses—beach houses yet not beach houses—curled up with his YA paperback on a couch, looking out to sea with the same gaze he was bestowing upon the Hudson? It made no sense to picture Eames in wilderness, Eames who wanted _community._

“I know that look,” Eames said, using his forty to nudge Arthur’s forty. Arthur realized he had been gazing abstractedly at Eames’s knees. “You’re dreaming up something good. What is it?”

Arthur ate another chip while he gathered his thoughts. “I was picturing us—you—in a house I saw once up the coast a couple hours out of San Francisco. Anyway—“ he plowed ahead “—you had all kinds of community at Masters. Is that what you’re missing? Would you just move wherever those people are? Or is part of the fantasy building it all up from nothing somewhere new?”

Eames shook his head. “I swear, you have the _most_ ideas about that place for someone who wanted nothing to do with it.”

Arthur opened his mouth to protest.

“Oh, you’re not going to argue _that._ That’s what _you_ were insufferable about for years, Arthur. We all knew exactly how much you hated the idea of going—how much you wanted to get as far away from us all as possible.”

The words were biting—made Arthur think of his mother, really—but they didn’t bring up the full, immersive wave of memories, all the screaming fights from that era of his life, neatly packed away now; that deluge only wobbled and threatened, Eames’s voice was so soft. He had told the truth on the train: he didn’t want to fight today. But he wanted to talk. To be honest. It was hard for Arthur, being honest. He had learned all the possible ways to go sideways in, around, and away from honest conversations in his house.

“It wasn’t quite like that. I had—well, you know—I had my reasons.” That sounded stupid, dramatic, as if his mom was, like, a monster or something. Stupid. “I mean—I don’t know, it seems like a pretty standard teenage impulse, rebelling against expectations, against what my parents had spent my whole life planning for me.”

Eames deflated a bit, his broad shoulders sagging. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, maybe I should have gone to public school too. I don’t actually have a bunch of friends from Masters, you know.”

“What? It always seemed like you had this great, big group of friends.” Those lacrosse kids at first, and then the pretty, wealthy city kids. They had probably sorted into more nuanced high school tropes or categories, but Arthur hadn’t put that fine a point on it. Eames had seemed—popular felt like a trite word—but yeah, Eames had seemed popular, while Arthur mostly just had Robert.

“A big group of friends,” Eames repeated. “I always assumed I would have something like that. It was my life blueprint, you know, that I got from my folks—that I would go to school and click with a group of friends, that we would really get each other. Commit to sticking together, you know? Taking on life together.”

“And that didn’t happen? You didn’t make friends at school?” Arthur frowned, thinking of that blueprint, etched deeper and deeper over the years in their parents’ conversations. That he and Eames would go to Masters together, that they would somehow become different people: not prickly, not at war with each other. That they would become best friends, like their mothers. Eames wasn’t saying that Arthur was part of _his_ blueprint though, that Arthur had let him down. Well, he wasn’t explicitly saying it. Arthur cleared his throat. “I thought you liked Wesleyan. I thought there was Yusuf and—and the art department kids. And all those guys and girls you played rugby with.”

“You did read my postcards.”

“Yeah, well. And there was that drive when we took Binky to camp last summer. We talked for a few hours.”

“Sure,” Eames said. “Well, you’re right. Yusuf is probably my best mate. I wish he lived in the city. That would really change things for me. I did make some great friends at Wesleyan, friends I’ll probably have forever. But it’s not a _group_ of friends, like that 90s sitcom dream, you know? And even with Yusuf, he’s not here. And I just kinda grew up assuming I’d meet someone who was like your mom is to my mom, and we’d be kind of—roommates—partners, I guess.” His mouth curved in a kind of wry smile, maybe a grimace. There it was. 

“Partners in crime?” Arthur asked, incredulous.

Eames laughed, wincing with self-consciousness. “Yeah, so that is like a terrible online dating cliche. But do you know—”

“Yes, I know what you mean. Someone to count on, to live your life with.”

Eames sighed. “But not necessarily romantic—like someone to find the world with you, not to shut yourself away from the world with. Someone steady.”

“Not romantic,” Arthur repeated. “And so, with me—how you feel about me—the postcards—” He took a breath. “That’s why you wrote to me? You wished I was…like my mom is to your mom?”

Eames shrugged, didn’t meet Arthur’s gaze. “Sounds really weird when you put it like that. It’s—well—I don’t know.”

Arthur waited for a long moment, his heart thumping loudly, greedily, for some reason he didn’t understand. When it seemed like Eames wasn’t going to say anything more, he said, “I get being lonely. Being out in the world can kind of suck.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

“We even have mead to cheers with.”

So they clinked their forties bottles of pretend mead and drank; Arthur could practically hear each of them thinking loudly.

“This is kind of like a date, Eames,” Arthur said.

Eames spit out his forty with a loud cough; Arthur looked at the wet splash on the front of his canvas jacket.

“I’m just saying,” he said. “That’s what it feels like to me, since we are having a picnic, and you selected me as your champion.” He pulled the handkerchief out of his pocket and waved it at Eames before reaching over and using it to dab at the wet spot on his coat.

Eames got very still, looking down at Arthur cleaning him. He opened his mouth and took a deep breath but then bit his lip and didn’t say anything. Arthur tucked the handkerchief away again and took a long drink from his bottle.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to see the unicorns now.” He cleared his throat. “Pardon me. If the fair lady will accompany me to look upon some rare tapestries of surpassing beauty—not surpassing the beauty of your ladyship, naturally—I would be honored, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Just tapestries?” Eames asked, distracted, voice low.

“Well, let’s study the likeness of the beast, and that will prepare us to summon the original when we return to the gardens,” Arthur improvised, standing. He reached down to take Eames’s arm and haul him to his feet. “Don’t look so mortified,” he said, dropping out of character as he dropped Eames’s arm. “I know it’s not actually a date, that that’s not what you meant it to be. I was just—I don’t know what I meant, actually. I was just thinking out loud. Come on.”

Eames was blushing, his cheeks glowing pink. It was strange to know someone and not know them at all. But he wanted to know Eames now, wanted Eames to keep flinging bits of his soul at Arthur, on paper and in person; suddenly, Arthur was sure of that.

Arthur bent down and scooped the remainder of their picnic back into Eames’s backpack before slinging the straps over his shoulders. Then he held out his arm to Eames, and Eames took it gingerly. The sensation was comforting, grounding, holding Eames’s arm against his body. He liked the warmth that he knew wasn’t really from Eames’s skin, blanketed as they were by layers of shirts, sweaters, and coats. But there was the illusion that it was, as Arthur clutched him close. And he supposed that it was equally alluring, the knowledge that his own heat increased in Eames’s presence.

They walked up to the museum’s main doors and paid for their tickets. Neither of them spoke, but the silence didn’t feel like the silence on the train—pained, Eames close to tears of frustration. Okay, so it was a little awkward, but, like their trek to the library, it felt like an adventure. Arthur observed Eames from the corner of his eye and held his arm tight. He was relieved when Eames slipped back into the partial embrace after reclaiming his debit card from the docent.

The museum seemed to consist of a series of rooms that wrapped around a courtyard. By tacit agreement, they drifted away from where the docent had gestured the unicorns waited, wanting perhaps to work their way there, room by room. The place wasn’t empty, but the crowds were thin, and Arthur found they could linger or whisper where they liked without feeling in the way of other patrons. Eames didn’t seem to mind that Arthur’s pace was slow or that he wanted to read the full text of the placards mounted next to each relic or piece of art they examined.

“Put that pretty accent of yours to work,” Arthur demanded, elbowing Eames until he read every decipherable caption or engraved epitaph in his poshest whisper.

“The Gothic Chapel, m’lord,” he declared, ushering Arthur into a round stone chamber with a high, rib-vaulted ceiling, lined with statuary and overlooked by narrow stained glass windows in a rainbow of colors. Eames swept his arm out in a theatrical gesture. “A replica of a thirteenth century monastic chapel with fourteenth century Austrian stained glass.”

There was what looked like a stone sarcophagus in the center of the room, its cover the carved effigy of a knight, hands resting together in prayer. He was covered by his shield, and a small lion creature guarded his feet.

Eames seemed drawn to the knight, but Arthur’s attention was pulled toward the saints and floral clusters in the panels of stained glass. He hesitated, then slid behind Eames’s shoulder, so he could speak against his ear. “Do you know,” he began, and Eames shivered, “that stained glass window on the staircase in my parents house?”

“Mmhm.”

“I have this thing about it. Like, it’s the only whimsical thing in the whole fucking house. And sometimes when it’s a stupid day at home, I imagine I’m in some kids’ story where it’s like my portal to Narnia or whatever, and if I do the right magic to open it, I could get the fuck out of here to a different world.”

“Mm, that’s fitting. Stained glass windows served that purpose in churches, letting the pious look into another world.”

“I had a dream that we were standing in front of this whole, huge cathedral wall of stained glass windows last night,” Arthur said, remembering that part of the dream in a flash.

Eames dropped his fancy accent. “I was in your dream?”

“Yeah.” Arthur tried to make the word light, like he wasn’t embarrassed and didn’t regret mentioning it.

No such luck. “What else happened in your dream?”

“Nothing much,” Arthur lied. “That’s all I remember.” Here he was, pressed against Eames’s back, hands on his shoulder, his arm, and oh, how viscerally it returned to him, the sensation of standing face to face, rubbing against Eames, Eames’s mouth on his neck.

“Liar. It’s okay. You can tell me later.” Eames took Arthur’s hand instead of reclaiming his arm. “Are there museums in California that you go to with your summer boyfriends?”

Arthur started. “I can’t believe my mother mentioned them that way to you," he muttered.

Eames’s eyes were lit with amusement and curiosity. “She said that’s what _you_ call them.”

“Yeah, well, that’s worse.”

“Poor guys,” he laughed. “I can’t believe you find them and slot them into that category so neatly.”

Arthur shrugged. “It’s just worked out that way. I guess—ah—I don’t know, I get focused during the semester. Got focused,” he corrected, because, right, school was _over._

“Don’t have time to boo up?”

“To _what_?” He grimaced. “It’s not like that, really. I think I’m more fun when I’m not working.”

“Well, who isn’t?”

Arthur shrugged. “I guess some people are better at the balance. I do go out and stuff. I don’t know. My friend Mal used to say that I gave off serious don’t fuck with me vibes when I was working on my thesis—like I was always writing bits of it in my head, and it gave me serious RBF,” he said ruefully.

Eames laughed again. “Well, tell her that hypothesis is too narrow. You’ve had impressive RBF since we were children.”

“Ah, well.” Arthur squinted down at the knight, raised an upturned palm in a helpless gesture.

“Oh.” Eames sighed. “Was she the friend who—”

“Yeah.” Arthur swallowed. “Super weird, huh?” he pressed on. “There was—ah—something wrong with her heart that nobody knew about. Just one of those weird things.”

“Fucking sucks.” Eames squeezed Arthur’s hand. “I’m sorry.”

“She moved out here, actually, after we graduated. I considered putting the two of you in touch. She was, like, still struggling to meet people she really liked here, to—how did you put it?—build community.”

“Oh.”

“We used to write letters to each other. She was an amazing writer, so observant and hilarious. All Robert writes about are his classes and, um, video games. My cousins send me Pokemon stickers. And there’s you,” he added uncertainly.

Eames looked surprised—a _Robert_ writes? _Robert_ writes _to you?_ look, if Arthur had to guess. But he didn’t say anything.

“That’s not an excuse,” Arthur said quickly. “For not writing you back. I was being a terrible correspondent for a long time before.”

“But now?”

“It’s not any easier.” Arthur reached out as if he would touch the face of the recumbent knight but paused, of course, his fingers hovering above its lips, its brow smoothed of worry by death and time and the the greasy fingers of all the patrons who had passed here before them during a more permissive age.

“It’s like they’re listening, waiting to hear our secrets,” Eames said of the room’s statues.

“Too true, m’lady,” Arthur sighed. “Though at this point we must be all out of secrets.”

“Never. I have dozens more.”

“So, have you been, ah, dating anyone in New York? Any summer boyfriends?”

“We do winter boyfriends here,” Eames said, still squeezing Arthur’s hand absently. “No one wants to hibernate alone.” He didn’t look at Arthur. “But I haven’t been dating lately, no.”

“Haven’t met anyone good?”

“I should be surprised and flattered that you think I’m choosy.” He smiled. “I was dating someone, for a while.”

Arthur swallowed. “And it seems—too soon?”

“No, not anymore, I don’t think. Maybe I’m afraid the reason it didn’t work out will manifest itself again with my next thing.”

“Why didn’t it work out?”

“My gender stuff, I guess.”

“What?” Arthur felt his hackles come up against this unknown person. “Did they—? Were they—?”

“A douchebag transphobe? Just not that into non-binary folks? I’m not even sure, but maybe neither of those things? It was more about me changing, you know?”

“Tell me.”

Eames ran his free hand through his hair. “I used to be this handsome guy, he said, and that’s the person he liked. Then I wasn’t anymore, and he didn’t know how to see me—and honestly I didn’t really know how I _wanted_ to be seen. There was just…all this resentment that started to build up as we kept missing each other. I walked away because I ended up with this feeling of wanting to be liked for _myself_. But it’s weird, because how would that look? Like, how can I be with someone without falling into all the scripts about how to be someone’s handsome guy? I know I want to be something else, but it’s hard to manifest it, you know? Especially when you’re intimate with people who are projecting all their constructs onto you—who they think you are, who they think you’ve always been.

So yeah, our relationship fell apart. And since then, it’s just been me, learning…”

“Learning?”

Eames’s lush lips curved in a slow, wry smile. “ _To be myself completely,_ ” he quipped.

“A tall order.”

“Ah, it makes you squeamish, that idea. Look at you.”

“No! It just sounds—scary, maybe.” A way to open oneself to attack.

Eames dropped Arthur’s hand and circled the effigy slowly, studying it, till he stood across from Arthur, the stone body between them. “Standing here, I can’t help but think of the green knight. You remind me of him. Would it be presumptuous to assume you know his story from Arthurian legend?”

Arthur shrugged. He had never cared much for his kingly namesake.

“Not so presumptuous. Well then, the green knight. Sometimes he’s a companion of the round table, but sometimes he’s mysterious, inhuman, fey. He tests the other knights’ loyalty. There are stories where he appears out of nowhere and offers to take a blow from Arthur or Gawain. But when they knock his head off, he heals from the wound and goes on.”

“Why would he offer? What’s in it for him?”

“He offers to take that blow in exchange for getting to strike the same blow. But when he gets his chance, he mimes it, giving his adversary a mere nick with his blade.”

“How could that remind you of me?”

“I think you take deep blows, Arthur. You think you can give as well as you can take—but you never do. You have a light touch, m’lord.”

“It’s not because I’m soft-hearted, m’lady” Arthur said sadly. “It’s just that my blows never land—no, that if they did, it would only make it worse. That’s different than being kind, pulling your punches.” But if it wasn’t kind, then what was it? Bitterness? Wariness?

“No, you _are_ kind.”

“I haven’t always been kind to you. You know I haven’t.”

“Well.” Eames shrugged, not meeting Arthur’s eyes. “What about you? Are you dating anyone? In California?”

Arthur shook his head. “I’m out of season,” he said after a moment, and Eames laughed at that.

“Hey, do you want to find the knights? I mean, the suits of armor?” he asked. “Like in the book?”

 _Like in my dream,_ Arthur thought. “Alright."

That sarcophagus was holding a space between them that Arthur found it easier to keep; he fell into step behind Eames as they walked into the next chamber, and Eames didn’t try to reclaim his hand. He had his hands shoved in his pockets, and his expression was thoughtful. They looked and looked in each chamber—in every room but the unicorn room—making their way entirely around the square garden courtyard at the heart of the museum, but they couldn’t find the suits of armor. A memory, a slip of knowledge just out of reach, began to nag Arthur, but he couldn’t quite get it in focus. He pulled his _Annie on My Mind_ copy from Eames’s bag, which he was still carrying, and began to thumb through the pages, trailing after Eames as Eames made his way toward one of the docents.

“Excuse me,” Eames said. “Can you tell us, are the suits of armor here? There’s a book I read where the characters come to the Cloisters and see the suits of armor.”

The docent shook her head. “We don’t have any here.”

Another employee, overhearing, stepped forward to contribute. “They moved all of ‘em to the Met in the seventies or eighties.”

Eames turned to Arthur, unexpectedly delighted. “Oh!” he said, stepping away from the docents, hands on Arthur’s arms. “Of course! _Annie on My Mind_ is from the early eighties.” He laughed. “ _Of course_ that’s what happens when I use a book written in the seventies as a guidebook. We’re not wrong, we’ve just stepped out of time, Arthur.”

Arthur couldn’t help but be charmed by how taken Eames was with his own mistake, with the idea that he’d gotten mixed up in history, time, and fiction. “I hesitate to contradict my lady…”

“But?” Eames asked indulgently.

Arthur held the book out to Eames. It was open to the scene where Liza and Annie played knights amongst the suits of armor. “See?” Arthur said. “They are in the Met for that part. The Cloisters is their second date, remember?”

Eames read the scene, forehead scrunched in concentration, and then his grin broadened. He just _beamed_ at Arthur. “Oh, damn,” he said. “Can’t believe I got that wrong. Favorite YA book and all.”

“You don’t look too put out.”

“You figured it out,” Eames said. “You already know the book better than I do. I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Hey,” Arthur exclaimed. “It’s not like that at all. I wouldn’t have remembered—I mean, figured it out, if it weren’t for my dream.”

They were standing at the arched doorway of the unicorn tapestry room.

“Ahh, the mysterious dream. Won’t you tell me?”

Somehow they drifted over the threshold and came to stand beneath the nearest tapestry—the unicorn caught, collared, resting in its cage after the drama of the hunt. Arthur’s gaze flicked up to the iconic image absently for a moment, but really, he couldn’t look away from Eames’s face. The room was dark and quiet, all preserving shadows and hushed voices from the two or three other patrons moving around them.

“I can’t tell you,” he whispered. “It’s embarrassing.”

“Please.” Eames’s green eyes were wide, transfixing; his hands in Arthur’s were warm. They were standing toe to toe, and it was a closer distance than Arthur had remembered.

“Well…” Arthur’s head felt fuzzy, full of honeycomb. The soothing dark and quiet of the room made it easy for him to pretend that they weren’t here in the 21st century but were standing ages ago, breathing in the dust of a different age. Arthur would not have been surprised were vespers to swell in the background; that was the intensity of the church feeling around them. “That window—the window into the magic seascape in my house—I mean, my parents’ house,” he began, and Eames nodded. “I dreamt my parents were, ah, lost at sea, like the little elephant’s parents. Except they weren’t lost, they were just having a picnic through the window, on the rocks, with you instead of me. And I wouldn’t go through the window.” Arthur paused, licked his lips. “Dreams are stupid. They never make any sense.”

“No, go on.”

“The part with the Met happened right before I woke up. I was running through the hall of knights, looking inside the suits of armor for you. I guess you were hiding from me.”

Eames mouth quirked at that. “ _I_ was hiding from _you?”_

“Yeah, but I found you.”

“In one of the suits of armor? And then what?”

“Ah, well. That was pretty much it.”

Eames tipped his head to the side, considering Arthur. “No, there’s something more.”

“When you came out of the armor, we, ah, you know.”

“Oh? I don’t know. Tell me.” Eames’s grin turned this heart-lifting mix of excited and sly.

“Eames.” Arthur’s face was heating; his breath felt hard to catch; his thoughts still felt honey-slow, syrupy. Eames and his gorgeous face—those full parted lips, excited heavy-lashed eyes, that errant patch of stubble—were so close to Arthur’s mouth. “You know,” Arthur said. The tips of their noses touched, and Arthur drew a startled, shaky breath. “You know.”

“No, I don’t know,” he said, his voice full of want but devoid of all play now, almost melancholy. “Last night you were looking murder at me over the dinner table.”

“I’ve done that for years.”

“Yeah.”

Their lips were brushing, very lightly—the softness, the wetness of Eames’s lips, the tang of orange juice and malt liquor on his breath. This had only happened once before, nearly ten years ago, fuck, and it had never gone further. No wonder it haunted Arthur’s dreams, the maddening space between them.

Eames was waiting.

“Okay,” Arthur breathed. There was nothing for it. He would hand Eames the truth even though Eames would probably gut him with it, sooner or later. “In my dream, I kissed you. We were kissing for a long time, until I woke up. And it’s usually like that.”

“Usually?”

“Whenever I dream about you, which is—often. I dream about you all the time, Eames.”

Eames made a pained noise, wrapped his arms around Arthur’s waist under the heavy wool of his open coat, and _kissed_ him, hard. Arthur dropped the book and kissed back with abandon, pressing against Eames’s body like he had in his dream.

Arthur, with all his summer boyfriends, had never experienced the intimacy of a winter kiss, the kind of embrace where heavy coats are worn unzipped, so you can stand chest to chest, sliding arms beneath layers, hands beneath sweaters against skin, and it’s like you have your own little world inside your coats—a distant cousin of the sensation of sharing the same sleeping bag, snug on a chilly, starry evening.

“God, Arthur, who are you today?” Eames wondered, pulling back to shift his attention and his wonderful mouth to Arthur’s jaw, his throat above the loop of his blue scarf. He kissed Arthur’s neck with the hunger and reverence Arthur remembered from the dream, and Arthur could barely shape sentences.

“The Arthur who plays duets with you,” he gasped. “Your champion, remember?” He ran his hands through Eames’s hair, curling his fingers around the back of Eames’s neck.

Eames bit back a moan, leaning cat-like into the touch. “No, you’re the unicorn,” he said, voice thick. “I’ve wanted you for ages, and even when I have you in my hands, I’m only half sure you exist.”

“I’m here, I’m real.” Arthur bit his lip.

“Ow.”

“See?”

“Not definitively,” Eames said weakly. “Pain is in the mind.”

Arthur kissed him again, slowly this time, savoring the softness and fullness of Eames’s lips against his own. He found that patch of stubble as he held Eames’s face in his hands. He was so absorbed in the little noises Eames was making as he explored his mouth with his tongue that the sudden presence of an onlooker completely startled him.

“Gentleman. I’m sorry, but this isn’t allowed in the museum.”

Eames’s hands were still firm around his waist, so Arthur couldn’t jump back too dramatically. He blinked, stupefied, while Eames cleared his throat and asked, “What? Kissing?”

The docent—the one who had told them about the suits of armor in the seventies or eighties—exhaled with a curmudgeonly _hrmph_ but seemed to hide a smile. “Kissing like _that_ ,” she said. “I mean, that much kissing. A little kissing is alright. The museum does not object to a little kissing.”

Eames laughed, delighted.

The kind of surprised mirth he would sometimes show when crossed had often irritated Arthur sorely—it had felt a type of brag, like oh, what a novelty for Eames to be told _no,_ to be shut down, it doesn’t bother him at all, it’s something he can _laugh_ about. But now, with his large hands trembling where they spanned Arthur’s waist and his quickened, warm breath against Arthur’s cheek, Eames’s equanimity was—well, apparently an achievement. It was marvelous, and Arthur wanted to curl up in it forever—fuck, Eames could be _his_ knight, _his_ champion. Arthur thought about how Eames had whisked him out of the house that morning and raced him to the end of the block. _You should talk about it. Before it calcifies inside you and fucks you up. I wouldn’t mind listening._

“Sorry,” Arthur told the docent. “I really like him. It’s hard to only kiss him a little.”

“Darling,” Eames said, the evenness of his voice finally cracking. “My unicorn. Let’s go admire the remainder of these beautiful tapestries. Merry Christmas to you,” he told the docent as he pulled Arthur across the room toward the bloodier part of the unicorn hunt. Arthur resisted for a moment, bent down to scoop up the copy of _Annie on My Mind_ splayed open on the polished floor, slipped it into one of the large pockets of Eames’s coat. The docent mercifully withdrew, and Eames said, “You really like me?”

“When I’m not frustrated as fuck by you, yes. Kiss me again,” Arthur demanded.

“Not here.” Eames brushed a quick, chaste kiss across Arthur’s lips but then held Arthur apart from him. “I hate this tapestry, how they’re stabbing the unicorn.” In the image before them, the unicorn was beset by hounds and encircled by the hunters, who were gouging at him with spears. The creature’s head was thrown back in panic as blood began to pour from his chest.

Arthur shuddered. “Fuck. It’s…awful.”

“Perhaps m’lord would accompany me back to the gardens?”

“Yeah, I’m ready. I suppose we’ve seen pretty much everything.”

They stopped at the bathrooms, and Arthur checked his phone while he waited for Eames. He still felt breathless, caught up in another exquisite Eamesian dream, but the action was automatic. Before he could remind himself that he didn’t want to let the outer world in yet, he had his messages open. There was a text from his mom, which either revealed that she was sorry about their conversation that morning or that she didn’t think it was a big deal at all. As usual, it was difficult for Arthur to tell which interpretation was correct.

_Having fun at the museum? Called erica. Robert & co. coming for drinks tonight 6ish! Xo_

When Eames emerged, they stepped out of the museum vestibule into the cobbled stone drive that led back down to the park, and Arthur showed him the message. “Guess tonight’s going to be a thing,” he said, keeping his voice flat.

“Mm. At least we have the rest of the afternoon to ourselves.”

Arthur searched his face for some hint of unease, the creeping back of family stuff and Robert weirdness into their idyll. But Eames didn’t look bothered; he tucked a fly-away curl behind Arthur’s ear, looked at him fondly, and then began doing up his coat. Arthur watched his large hands fasten the buttons at his collar and adjust the huge fur hood with brisk, practiced motions until it was just so. He pulled leather gloves out of a pocket and began to pull them on; they too had buttons, at the wrist, that needed to be neatly fastened.

Arthur licked his lips. Each button made him feel more perversely aware of the warm skin Eames was hiding away from the gray sky, the chill breeze off the river, and Arthur. “Don’t take this as a slight against your virtue or my good intentions, m’lady, but I want very much to ravish you right now.”

Eames laughed. “Damn it. Why is it so cold outside?”

“I thought you preferred the park like this, all frosty and solemn,” Arthur teased.

“That was when I wanted a picturesque landscape to brood in, and the leafless prospect suited my purposes fine. Now I want to get my hands in your pants, and it doesn’t suit my purposes so well.”

Arthur pressed his face against Eames’s neck, kissing the skin beneath his ear and relishing the softness of the fur hood rubbing against his cheek.

“I wish we were in Kyoto,” Eames sighed. “We could get our ravishing on at one of those love hotels.”

“Wow, romantic. Don’t you live here? What about your apartment or dorm room or whatever?”

“It’s a room in an apartment, but I sublet it out till the semester starts. The starving artist thing, you know.”

“Mmm.”

“I guess my virtue shall remain intact a little longer,” Eames said with sorrow.

They began to walk into the park again. Arthur pulled on his own knit gloves and took Eames’s hand. “We _are_ sharing a bedroom with two perfectly serviceable beds…”

“Ah! You would venture back into the viper’s nest? My brave knight.”

“You inspire me. I’d perform great feats of courage for you, face the most perilous perils.”

“The perils are quite perilous, however. Wandering ducklings. Nosy parents. A cocktail party of doom.”

“A lock on our bedroom door,” Arthur countered. “A lock on our bathroom door inside our bedroom with its locked door. A hot shower.”

“Be still my heart.”

They were nearly through Fort Tryon Park, retracing their earlier, meandering steps to return to the subway, when Eames gasped, “Darling, look!” He swung Arthur around suddenly and spoke against his ear in an urgent whisper. “It’s our cardinal.” Arthur spotted the woman, her red coat unmistakable, standing in front of her easel at the edge of the terrace overlooking the Hudson. “Let’s go talk to her,” Eames said.

“What will we say?”

“Let’s have her take our picture! Come on, I’ll race you.”

“Eames! We can’t just _run at_ someone we don’t know.”

They sprinted down the path toward the painting woman, Eames still holding onto Arthur’s hand. A cluster of small birds kicked up into the air as they jumped over the remains of a sandwich. Arthur dragged Eames back to walking before they got too close to the painter.

“Beat you,” he panted, slapping his free hand against the stone wall.

“We were holding hands the whole way,” Arthur said. “It doesn’t count as a real race. If anything, it’s a tie.”

The cardinal smiled at them. She was older than Arthur had imagined, lines around her mouth and white hair mixed with brown at her temples.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but would you take a picture of us?” Eames asked her.

She looked down at her paint-smeared gloves and then back at Eames, hesitating.

“S’okay.” Eames gave her his charming grin, which revealed his crooked teeth, and he pulled out his phone. Its black cover was also marked by dabs and smears of paint. “I’m a painter too.”

“Well, alright. If you’re sure.” She put down her brush and pulled off one glove, setting it down alongside her palette box. Eames turned on the camera and handed it over. From up close, Arthur could see that the cardinal’s red coat was not pristine: the sleeves showed paint marks, and there was a comet streak of ochre on her chest.

Arthur stared at her painting, expecting to see a gray-daubed square of a river scene. Instead he saw a dramatically lit still life, a beautifully rendered study of a heap of arcane junk—a human skull, a glass vase of wilting daffodils, leather-bound books, some loose tarot cards, all spilled across a wrinkled, thick brocade.

“Oh,” he murmured. As he looked closer, he noticed a USB cord wrapped around the base of the skull, woven with silk ribbons. Beneath the Temperance tarot card, there was a stack of bills and junk mail envelopes. A lone zebra print heel was half distorted by the glass of the vase. Some of the books were Penguin Classics with creased orange spines. Above the arrangement hung bubbles, perfect, reflective rainbow spheres. Arthur sighed and stepped forward. The painting looked like someone had overturned a box of theater props and read them like tea leaves, discovering the secret to the universe in their tangle.

“It’s a _vanitas_ painting,” Eames ventured over his shoulder. He sounded tentative but eager, like a student who so wanted to please a teacher that he was willing to risk offering a wrong answer.

“Yes,” the cardinal said.

“What—?” Arthur began.

Eames cut him off, excited. “ _Vanitas_ paintings were made by the Dutch in the seventeenth century. The word can translate to emptiness, transience, so they’re kind of warnings but also celebrations. Like of the beauty in the fleeting, mortal nature of life.”

“Okay, but, here—?” Arthur frowned, looking between the canvas and the Hudson. “Where—? Why paint here, when it’s a still life?”

“Oh, believe me,” the painter said, “I’ve stared at this arrangement in my studio for so long that it’s been seared onto my eyelids.”

Eames gave a knowing laugh, clearly commiserating.

“Sometimes when I get stuck, I like to go somewhere beautiful and see how a new environment changes my relationship to my subject,” she continued. “It’s amazing, how you can think you know something, see something, when you’re missing the most—” She reached toward her painting and, fingers hovering above the wet canvas, traced a bright, yellow-white highlight on the skull, a shadowed plane the same gray as the river before them where it touched the far shore. “The most vital parts of it.”

Arthur had to keep from laughing, because it was  _too_ heavy-handed—her words, the theme of his life, of his and Eames’s day. But Eames just nodded gravely and answered, “I’ll have to try this tactic next time I’m pulling out my hair in my studio.”

“What kind of paintings do you make?” the cardinal asked.

What _did_ Eames paint, nowadays? Arthur thought of the abstract layers of lines and color that cluttered his postcards. He remembered their middle school sketchbooks of elves and Dragon Ball Z characters and the gaunt charcoal portraits Eames made in high school when he was going through his Egon Schiele phase.

Eames reclaimed his phone and pulled up an album of images, works in progress snapshots taken amidst the chaos of his studio. “I’m doing a post-bacc program, and these are for my big project. Well, I think these two are. The rest might just be studies for it, if they don’t come together.”

The three of them bent their heads over the phone, and the cardinal said, “I like them a lot. You’re really talented. The line work here...This is a really lovely moment, where these shapes come together.”

“They’re really good,” Arthur echoed. Inadequate praise, but he didn’t have an artist’s language. Besides, he was nearly struck dumb by the grace and complexity of Eames’s fields of color and layered lines that practically vibrated with energy and intention.

Eames, beset by compliments on either side, glowed. “Thanks. They’re coming along. Some days I want to burn the lot,” he confessed.

“That feeling gets worse during your MFA, let me tell you,” she said easily. “Do you want your picture taken now?”

“Yes, thank you.” Eames handed her the phone. “Come here,” he said to Arthur. He reeled Arthur in, not beside him but in front of him, wrapping his arms around Arthur’s waist and resting his chin on Arthur’s shoulder.

“There,” the painter said, gloved hands wobbling as she centered them in the frame. “That’s sweet.” She handed the phone back to Eames.

He looked down to check the picture. “You only took one,” he noted.

“But it’s a good one, right?”

Eames nodded, eyes alight and lips parted, like if he could, he would say so many things in answer to her. Seeing him like that, for a crazy moment Arthur wished they could bring her to their Christmas gathering. He wished that their Christmas gathering would be full of people like her instead of like their parents and Maurice and Erica Fischer, talking about art and spending time with beauty instead of finance, so-called liberal politics, and each other’s foibles.

“Do you make art too?” The cardinal asked Arthur. He had been staring at her canvas again, he realized.

He shook his head. “I make coffee.”

“Ah. You do real service for society, then.”

He snorted. “That’s one way to look at it.”

She smiled gently, then looked up at the sky, raised her bare hand. “I should pack up. It’s going to start snowing soon.”

“Really?”

“It’s warmer now than it was before. Can you feel it?” She began to wipe off her palette knife and place her paints back in their box. “Have a good Christmas,” she said. Then, strangely, “Take care of each other.” Like she was giving them a blessing. It didn’t even feel like true make-believe to see her as a Tempestarii, summoning a gale with her outstretched hand, with her rendering of a small human follies. Paint strokes like runes, magic. Arthur said as much to Eames once they’d bid her goodbye and Merry Christmas and resumed their walk toward the train.

“Yes, she’s definitely a weather witch. That was so cool,” Eames gushed. “She was trans, don’t you think?”

“Oh,” Arthur said. “I’m not sure. I didn’t—I couldn’t tell.”

Eames didn’t seem to notice his fumbling. “I think she was! It makes me really happy whenever I see trans women out in the world.” He swung their joined hands and hummed, looking off ahead of them abstractedly, like his gaze was really turned inward. “Of course, now I think a lot of women I meet are trans.” He laughed in a way that made Arthur smile. “But I’m pretty sure she was! She was rad.”

“Does meeting her make up for not seeing the unicorns?” Arthur asked softly, after a moment.

“I would have liked to see the unicorns,” Eames replied. “Except—well, it’s like that scene with Liza and Annie, the day they ride the ferry. I don’t want to pretend with you anymore,” he quoted, “At least not right now. I want to be completely myself here with _you_ , really here with you.”

Arthur stopped and pulled Eames kissing-close, wrapping his arms around his waist. “That was us for real in the museum, in the tapestry room—and just now, meeting our cardinal.”

He hadn’t meant for the words to sound like a question, but Eames nodded in response, pulling him closer, reassuring. “Mm. Your face is cold,” he said, when their noses touched. “We should get back to the subway.”

“We’ll have to come here again in the spring when it warms up.”

“Yes, spring, a better unicorn spotting season.”

“With better picnicking weather.”

The walk to the subway station passed quickly as they discussed the possibilities. While they waited for the train, Eames texted the picture to him. Arthur noticed that the last messages they had exchanged had been in the summer—short, barely punctuated bursts of logistics sent on the drive to and from Vermont. _I’m out front. Do u want a coffee? i’m already in line. Be there in a min. Ok._ Strange. Arthur saved the picture, smiling to himself.

To his mom, he wrote, _Having fun. Be home in time for everything tonight. xo_

The train rattled to the platform, and they curled up together in the corner of the nearest car.

“Mmm. Another hour on the train.” Eames undid the buttons of his jacket at his throat. 

“I don’t suppose we can get away with making out the whole time?”

Their side of the car was empty except for a mother and her two children, a large Macy’s bag of wrapped presents at their feet. The children were playing a game on the woman’s tablet while the woman looked at her phone.

“I don’t suppose we can,” Eames said.

“I know,” Arthur said. “What if we read together? We can be kind of quiet, so we don’t bother anyone.”

Eames snorted. “It’s New York. We can do whatever we want as long as we’re okay with someone possibly yelling at us to shut the fuck up. You want to read _Annie on My Mind_?”

“Yeah, let’s start from the beginning.” Arthur pulled Eames’s copy from his bag and pressed it into Eames’s hands.

“Alright, chapter one—no, wait—untitled prologue.” Eames cleared his throat. _“It’s raining, Annie,_ ” he began. Then he looked up from the page, caught the corner of Arthur’s mouth in a kiss, and said, “It’s snowing, Arthur.”

Arthur looked out of the train’s windows and saw white flakes swirling everywhere, landing on buildings, parked cars, and the bare, gesturing branches of sidewalk trees. The sky was already darkening in late afternoon midwinter dusk, bringing the glow of Christmas lights into greater prominence. In the glass, Arthur saw a ghost reflection of he and Eames cuddled together. Arthur and Eames and the snow: it was not unlike seeing their image in the stained glass seascape on the stairs, because there they were together through the glass in a snow globe magic world, having an adventure. The snow came down faster and faster, and they watched it quietly, Eames breath warm on Arthur’s cheek, until the train thundered beneath the ground toward Brooklyn and home.

 

*

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place in an alternative universe where libraries are open on Christmas Eve. *coughs*
> 
> You can find me vaguely tumbling [here](http://coffeecupandcorgi.tumblr.com). :)


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